Israel’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was “a model to the world”, a leading professor in epidemiology has said.

Addressing the inaugural Tel Aviv University Trust’s Women Circle in London, Professor Khitam Muhsen, head of the of the university’s department of epidemiology and preventative medicine, said: “The success of Israel’s response to the pandemic was [because] the government committed a lot of money to research and acquired vaccines early on.”

Muhsen, an Arab-Israeli, said that a pressing issue had been the lower vaccination rate among the Arab-Israeli community, largely due to “a lack of governmental trust”.

The Tel Aviv resident said that the Israeli Health Ministry had been forced to work hard to change attitudes towards vaccination by leading “a targeted cultural campaign, including translating material into Arabic, as well as using celebrities in that community to further spread the message”. Though, according to Muhsen: “The most useful intervention was from family physicians.” This led to a narrowing of the gap between the vaccination rate of the Arab-Israeli population and the general population.

During the pandemic, the professor led research into the efficacy of vaccines, as well as the reasons for the scepticism surrounding them.

Looking to the future, Muhsen, who has just spent a sabbatical year at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, stressed the importance of global coordination when it came to vaccine distribution, describing the response of many governments as “nationalist”.

By contrast, Muhsen said that the Israeli and British health authorities “had been at the vanguard in the collection and publication of data relating to the pandemic”.

The Marylebone event marked a soft launch for the group. Muhsen said: “Scientific events are usually majority men, and, therefore, this is very empowering.”

Cara Case, CEO of the Tel Aviv University Trust said the circle was to “bring together remarkable individuals to foster meaningful connections”.