ICMR chief Soumya Swaminathan to be WHO's new Deputy Director General

Swaminathan will be a part of WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus's new team that will steer the international public health body.

Tedros of Ethopia took over as Director General of WHO in July this year.

The new WHO senior leadership team represents 14 countries, including all WHO regions and women representing 60 percent of the leadership team.

“The new team includes former ministers of health, some of the world’s leading physicians, scientists and researchers, and programmatic experts in universal health coverage, health emergencies, communicable and non-communicable diseases, climate and environmental health, and women’s, adolescents’ and children’s health," the WHO said in a release.

"Individually and collectively, they have a wealth of experience across government, private sector, multilateral, civil society and academic organizations,” WHO added.

Swaminathan who holds MBBS from Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune and MD in Pediatrics from AIIMS, New Delhi, subsequently held a Post Doctoral Medical Fellowship in Pediatric Pulmonology at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and a Research Fellowship in the Dept. of Pediatric Respiratory Diseases, University of Leicester, UK.

She joined the Tuberculosis Research Centre, Chennai in 1992 and has spent the past 23 years in health research.

Her research interests include pediatric and adult tuberculosis, epidemiology and pathogenesis, the role of nutrition and HIV-associated TB. She also served for 2 years as Coordinator, Neglected Tropical Diseases at TDR and sat on several WHO and global advisory bodies and committees on public health,TB,innovation and intellectual property.

She published more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.