Chief Health Officer
Dr John Gerrard, Chief Health Officer
BSc (Med) MB BS (Syd) MSc (Microbiology) DLSHTM DTM&H (Lon) FRACP
Dr Gerrard was appointed Chief Health Officer for Queensland Health in December 2021. He was the long-term Director of Infectious Diseases at the Gold Coast Hospital, where he was instrumental in the design the Gold Coast University Hospital, which has been at the front line of Queensland’s COVID-19 response.
A leading infectious disease specialist, Dr Gerrard identified Australia’s earliest known case of AIDS early in his career. He has since been involved in malaria vaccine trials and has worked internationally to strengthen pandemic preparedness, including travel to Sierra Leone during the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic, where he helped establish Australia’s first Ebola Treatment Centre. He was awarded the Australian Humanitarian Overseas Service Medal for this work.
Dr Gerrard managed Queensland’s first cases of COVID-19 and was part of a mission to assist Japanese authorities in containing the outbreak of COVID-19 aboard the Diamond Princess.