About Dr. Sovann
Dr. Ly Sovann is Director of the Disease Control Department at Cambodia’s Ministry of Health, where he also serves as IHR Focal Point and Spokesperson. With extensive expertise in disease surveillance, outbreak investigation, and public health emergency response, he has been a driving force behind reforming Cambodia’s surveillance and response systems since 2004.
Why he’s nominated
As the senior leader behind Cambodia’s operational research on the 7-1-7 target, Dr. Ly’s team has made a significant contribution to the growing global evidence base on what it takes to build faster, more accountable outbreak response systems. The study offers one of the most rigorous and contextually rich evaluations of 7-1-7 implementation to date. In publishing this work, his team has demonstrated that operational research and performance improvement can go hand in hand—and set a standard for how countries document and learn from their 7-1-7 journey.