Professor Helen Rees

Professor Helen Rees is Chair of the MedAccess Board of Directors, a member of the Investment Committee, and a member of the Nominations and Governance Committee.

Professor Helen Rees is an award-winning global health leader who has dedicated her life to improving the health of people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with a focus on vaccine-preventable diseases, HIV, and sexual and reproductive health. Professor Rees is internationally recognised for her contributions to public health research and global health policy.

Professor Rees started her career as a family doctor in the UK before moving to South Africa to provide medical assistance to communities denied access during Apartheid. In 1994, she founded Wits RHI to expand African-generated research into HIV, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections, reproductive health and vaccines, and remains the Executive Director for the Institute.

Professor Rees has advised the South African Department of Health extensively on a range of topics related to HIV, sexual and reproductive health, vaccines and pandemic preparedness since the inception of a democratic South Africa, and has played a pivotal role in responding to global health emergencies such as Ebola, COVID-19, and Mpox. She has served on and chaired many national and global scientific committees and boards and is recognised as a leader in global health security and has served on and chaired a number of World Health Organization (WHO) International Health Regulation (IHR) Emergency Committees.

Professor Rees is a member of the South African National Advisory Group on Immunisation and co-chair of the Mpox Vaccine Working group, and she co-chairs both South Africa’s Incident Management Teams on Mpox and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, overseeing South Africa’s mpox and immunisation responses respectively. Professor Rees chairs WHO’s African Regional Technical Advisory Group on Immunization as well as the WHO IHR Emergency Committee on Polio. She co-chairs the WHO SAGE Working Group on Ebola vaccines and is a member of the SAGE Working Group on HPV vaccines. In 2026, Professor Rees was appointed the board chair of the International Vaccine Institute, a non-profit advancing vaccine research and access in low- and middle-income countries. She is the co-chair of the WHO Poxvirus Collaborating Centre (CORC) under the released prioritised pathogen family report by the WHO R&D Blueprint. This is the only CORC led entirely from Africa, working to accelerate global development of medical countermeasures against the poxviruses.

Professor Rees obtained her Medical Degree and Master’s in Social and Political Sciences from New Hall (now Murray Edwards) College at Cambridge. She is a graduate of Harvard Business School (HBS) having completed the HBS Senior Executive Programme. She is a personal Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of the Witwatersrand and an Honorary Professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an Honorary Fellow of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science (Medicine) by the University of London.

Professor Rees is internationally recognised for her work on vaccine-preventable diseases, HIV, and sexual and reproductive health, with more than 280 published academic papers to her name. She has received numerous awards and accolades for her work in health research. Professor Rees was named an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 2001 and received the French National Order of Merit in 2022. In 2016, she received the South African National Order of the Baobab for her exceptional contributions to maternal and child health and HIV. In May 2025, Professor Rees received the prestigious Dr Lee Jong-wook Memorial Prize for Public Health from the WHO, one of the highest global honours in the field of public health. This award recognises her exceptional contributions to global health, particularly in vaccine research, outbreak response, and health equity. In addition to this accolade, Professor Rees has been elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, joining a distinguished network of scholars committed to advancing science and innovation across the African continent.