Professor NIGEL LIGHTFOOT CBE, MBBS, FRCPath, MSc, FFPH           

Dual Maltese and United Kingdom citizenship

 

Professor Nigel Lightfoot CBE has a long and distinguished career in public health and global health security. He is a High-Level Advisor to EU FPI and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the International Science and Technology Centre in Kazakhstan. He is a Consultant for NATO working on mobile CBRN laboratories for Moldova, Tunisia and Morocco. He is the Independent Medical Adviser to Yorkshire Water Services since 1995 and he was the Consultant Epidemiologist for Amazon Europe on COVID-19

 

Recent Achievements

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Nigel joined CoE Project 87 in 2020 and led the Exercises and Testing Work Package culminating in the delivery of a command post exercise in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in June 2024.

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For Project 88 he delivered a tabletop exercise on medical responses to CBRN threats in Batumi, Georgia involving Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Ukraine in June 2024.

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For Project 100 he delivered tabletop exercises in Sarajevo and in Chisinau on responding to biosecurity and biosafety incidents for front line officers of the border police and customs involving Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Ukraine in November 2024.

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He is adept at leading the development of exercises with a team of individuals from the countries involved, it becomes their exercise and prepares them to develop their own exercises in the future.

 

Career

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Training originally as a consultant medical microbiologist, Nigel served for twelve years in the Royal Navy including nuclear submarines. He was a Director in the Public Health Laboratory Service from 1982-2002 and following the 9/11 attacks in the United States he was appointed to the Department of Health as Head of CBRN Training and Scenario Development.

 

He developed cutting edge multi-agency exercises for CBRN preparedness, and as Director of Emergency Response he set up the Emergency Response Division of the Health Protection Agency from its inception in 2003 until 2010. He led on pandemic influenza, emerging health threats, CBRN response strategies and international relations in G7 for these areas.

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He was Executive Director of Connecting Organisations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS) 2012 -2016 and led six networks of 28 low to middle income countries in building capacity, developing one health and innovative operational research programmes for the surveillance of infectious diseases. He successfully built a West African Network in the wake of the Ebola crisis.

 

Dr Lightfoot has enormous experience in public health and crisis management; He was responsible for the Health Protection Agency pandemic influenza planning and response.

 

He led the public health investigation into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium 210 in London in 2006/7.

 

Dr Lightfoot was appointed a Commander of the British Empire for services to public health in the 2009 New Year’s Honours List.