Professor Dr Maha El Rabbat is a former Minister of Health and Population of Egypt and Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa Health Policy Forum. She has accumulated more than 30 years of strategic leadership, policy, academic, advocacy and operational expertise, working closely with national, regional, and international organizations as a public health expert on a wide range of health issues, including: health system strengthening and governance reform; HTA; maternal, child and reproductive health; hepatitis C; emerging diseases; non-communicable diseases; and other public health priorities in various contexts, such as deprived areas and among vulnerable groups. She has extensive experience in conducting system-wide assessments and reform in response to emerging needs such as the Avian Flu, Swine Flu and Hepatitis C, HIV and supported strengthening of service delivery at different levels. 

As professor of public health and chairperson of the public health department at Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, in July 2011, she led efforts to reform public health teaching and research. Between July 2013 and March 2014, she served as Minister of Health and Population of Egypt, during which time she consolidated efforts to address system inefficiencies by supporting reform and restructuring initiatives to equip the ministry to better handle future needs, to operationalize public health priority actions and to foster social justice and equity for universal health coverage. Since 2014, as executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Health Policy Forum, a regional NGO, Dr El Rabbat has worked on strengthening health systems and responses to emerging needs and human development in the region, particularly in middle and lower income countries, through evidence-based policy, knowledge exchange and networking. Among her current projects, she is working in partnership with UNHCR and the League of Arab States to develop a regional strategy for public health in asylum context.

Dr Mirta Roses Periago is a former Director of the PAHO/WHO Region of the Americas. She earned her degree in Medicine and Surgery from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, in 1969, completing her specialization in tropical medicine at the Universidade Federal de Bahia, Brazil, in 1971. Her graduate studies include a diploma in public health (1974) and a specialization in epidemiology (1982) at the Escuela de Salud Pública in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as well as a specialist degree in clinical medicine and epidemiology of infectious diseases at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, in 1976.

From 2003 to 2013, she was Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). She was the first woman to head the world’s oldest international health organization. Prior to assuming this office, she served two terms as Assistant Director of PAHO (1995-2003) being responsible for the direct supervision of all PAHO/WHO Representative Offices in the Americas, forming part of WHO’s Directors of Programme Management Group (DPM) and the Global Programme Management Group (GPMG).

Prior to this, she served seven years as PAHO/WHO Representative in the Dominican Republic (1988-1992) and in Bolivia (1992-1995), supporting public health policies and programs, promoting south-south cooperation and putting public health at the center of development priorities.

Dr Palitha Abeykoon is a senior physician and public health professional from Sri Lanka, with post graduate education and training from the universities of Geneva and Southern California, and the Harvard School of Public Health, where he was a Taro Takemi Fellow.

He is a Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka, chairs the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol, serves on the National Advisory Committee on Communicable Diseases, and is a member of National Medicines Authority of Sri Lanka. A former president of the Sri Lanka Medical Association, Dr Palitha serves as a member of the WHO Global Learning Academy and the Regional Director’s Research Advisory Committee. 

In his long career in the WHO, Dr Palitha served as the health workforce advisor in Nepal where he helped to set up the Institute of Medicine, the country’s first medical school, and later in Indonesia where he helped establish the Consortium of Health Sciences and five new schools of public health.

Subsequently, Dr Palitha worked as the WHO South-East Asia Regional Advisor on Human Resources for Health and later was the Director of Health Systems Development. He also served as the WHO Representative to India and led India’s polio eradication effort.

Dr Palitha has been a consultant in health policy and health systems to the World Bank, WHO, UNFPA and DFID in Thailand, Myanmar, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Timor Leste and India. He facilitated the establishment of Myanmar’s first public health university and the blueprint for the Royal Bhutan Institute of Medicine and its baccalaureate program in public health.

He is the recipient of numerous academic awards, the Dr. Fred Katz Award of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Medical Education, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the South East Asia Public Health Education Network, and most recently the Kazue McLaren Leadership Achievement Award of the Asia Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health.

Dr Palitha has published widely in international journals, written chapters in books in public health and medical education, and most recently was the editor of the History of Medicine in Sri Lanka.

Dr Young-soo Shin served as the WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific from February 2009 to January 2019. Dr Shin was the first Regional Director for the Western Pacific elected from outside of WHO. From the first day in his service, Dr Shin pledged to put countries at the centre of the work of WHO in the Region. He has led a series of reforms to change the way the Organization works. His focus has been constant:  providing better support focused on needs at the country level. These reforms are producing results by helping Member States to achieve better health outcomes for the nearly 1.9 billion people of the Western Pacific Region.

Prior to joining WHO, Dr Shin was a professor and founding Chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the College of Medicine, Seoul National University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1969.

He was deeply involved in expanding the Korean national health insurance system in 1980s and later, when universal health coverage was being introduced, in securing quality and accountability of the Korean health care service system.  Dr Shin was instrumental in the establishment of Korea's National Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, which oversees health care service quality and disburses national health insurance payments. He served as the founding president from 2002 to 2003.

Dr Shin received the Mugunhwa Medal from the Korean Government, which is the highest-level medal given to Korean civilians.