The Humanitarian Imperative to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons - Dr Tilman Ruff AP, MB BS (Hons), FRACP

Rotary Melbourne Podcast

Angus Mitchell Oration: "The Humanitarian Imperative to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons" Tilman Ruff is a public health and infectious diseases physician; Co-President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War since 2012 (Nobel Peace Prize 1985); and co-founder and founding international and Australian Chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons". Dr Ruff is Associate Professor in University of Melbourne’s Nossal Institute for Global Health, which he helped establish. Tilman was the first civil society representative on Australian nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty delegations, civil society advisor to the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, and a delegate to the landmark Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Norway, Mexico and Austria (2013-4). In 2017, he led the IPPNW delegation in New York throughout the UN General Assembly negotiation and adoption of the historic Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. In support of the treaty, he helped build a continuing collaboration between IPPNW and the largest international health federations - the World Medical Association, the World Federation of Public Health Associations and the International Council of Nurses. An IPPNW member since 1982, Dr Ruff has served as International Councillor for Australia, Boston-based consultant on policy and programs, and SE Asia-Pacific Vice-President. He is a past national president of IPPNW’s Australian affiliate, the Medical Association for Prevention of War. Dr Ruff has clinical interests in immunisation and travel medicine, with over 22 years as Australian Red Cross international medical advisor. He was first to document links between outbreaks of ciguatera fish poisoning and nuclear testing in the Pacific. The inaugural head of travel medicine at Fairfield Hospital and then Royal Melbourne Hospital; Dr Ruff worked on hepatitis B control and maternal and child health in Indonesia and Pacific island countries with Burnet Institute, UNICEF and WHO; spent 5 years as regional medical director for an international vaccine manufacturer, and is a foundation member and serving his third term on the WHO Western Pacific Region Hepatitis B Immunisation Expert Resource Panel. Dr Ruff was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2012 “for service to the promotion of peace as an advocate for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and to public health through the promotion of immunisation programs in the South-East Asia – Pacific region”.