Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin
Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin is the fourth Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). He holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Dr. Osotimehin qualified as a medical doctor from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria almost 40 years ago and obtained his doctorate in medicine from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom in 1979. A fellow of the prestigious Nigerian Academy of sciences, Dr. Osotimehin is also a member of the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Physicians, and a visiting fellow at the Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies between 1996 and 1997.
He was appointed as a Professor at the University of Ibadan in 1988 and headed the Department of Clinical Pathology before being elected as Provost of the College of Medicine of the same university in 1990, a position which he held until 1994.
In 2002, he was appointed to head the national response to HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, an assignment which he carried out most creditably bringing about a perceptible decline in the national prevalence of the epidemic from 5.8% to 4.4% in addition to increasing awareness about the epidemic from 15% to 95% in the country of over 150 million people. Under his watch as the head of the AIDS Control Agency, Nigeria was able to put about 350,000 people on antiretroviral treatment, up from a base of 10,000 in 2002.
Having successfully carried out this assignment, he was appointed the Minister of Health, where he led the country’s health sector to take landmark strides in health planning and a redirection of the Ministry to appropriately deliver its stewardship role, through the instrumentality of his revolutionary ‘Agenda for Health’.
The new UNFPA Executive Director is a champion of primary health care, who has been widely acknowledged for his stewardship and landmark policy thrust of integration and decentralization to rural populations as a way of bringing health services close to the people, and giving responsibilities to communities for their health and social welfare.
Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, a strong advocate of youth and gender issues within the context of reproductive health and rights, has served in several responsible positions, capacities and committees.
The latest of such appointments prior to his assumption of office as the Chief Executive of UNFPA is as the African Spokesperson of the Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), on the United Nation Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Maternal and Child Health. In this role, he interacted and advocated with Ministers of Health, Heads of States, First Ladies and the African Missions to promote the Global Strategy and get African Goverments’ commitments to the implementation of the Strategy over the next five years.
Dr. Joy Lawn
Dr. Joy Lawn, B MedSci, MB BS, MRCP (Paeds), MPH PhD
Director Global Evidence and Policy, Saving Newborn Lives-Save the Children-US Cape Town, South Africa.
Joy is an African-born paediatrician and perinatal epidemiologist with over 20 years experience in newborn health especially in Africa, including 4 years as a lecturer and neonatologist in Ghana.
She shifted to public health and global estimation whilst at the WHO Collaborating Center, CDC Atlanta, USA (1998-2001), and then at the Institute of Child Health, London, UK (2001-2004), completing a Masters of Public Health at Emory University, Atlanta and PhD at University College London.
She is now Director Global Evidence and Policy with the Gates-funded Saving Newborn Lives program of Save the Children-US, working with governments and partners to integrate, scale up and evaluate newborn care, particularly in Africa, including a network of 6 large-scale effectiveness trials.
She leads the United Nation’s Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group’s Neonatal Group which developed the first cause-of-death estimates for 4 million neonatal deaths each year, published in The Lancet Neonatal series and WHO WHR 2005, and now produced annually. She has authored multiple peer reviewed papers and helped lead a number of Lancet series, including the stillbirth series due for publication March 2011.
She led a 60 author team from 14 organizations for the book “Opportunities for Africa’s Newborns” and also 7 country teams for African Science Development Initiative’s report “Science in Action – Saving the lives of Africa’s mothers, newborns and children”. She co-chairs the Countdown to 2015 technical subcommittee overseeing national data profiles and reports.
Joy has recently presented a BBC documentary on progress and challenges for newborn survival in Malawi and Nepal.
MADAME CALLISTA J. MUTHARIKA
Madame Callista Mutharika was born in Malawi. She received her primary and secondary education in Malawi. She holds a Certificate in Education from the University of Leeds in England and a Diploma in Human Resource Management from the University of Leicester.
She spent 15 years in England and worked for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme, Shell UK and Coutts Bank. In Malawi she has worked as a secondary school teacher at Likuni Girls Secondary School, Lecturer of Office Arts at the Malawi Polytechnic and her last job before joining politics was as Country Director of The Hunger Project, an international nongovernmental organization with its headquarters in New York. She was involved with rural women in programmes of food security, maternal and child health, girl education, micro-credit, water and sanitation.
She became a Member of Parliament in 2004 and belonged to the Social and Gender, Legal Affairs, and Appointments Standing Committees of Parliament. She also served as a Member of the Pan African Parliament.
She was appointed Deputy Minister of Local Government in August 2006 and Minister of Tourism and Wildlife in 2007, a position she served until May 2009.
She became the First Lady of Malawi in April 2010. She has since been working with women in areas of Safe Motherhood, increasing the number of women in Parliament and with vulnerable children.
Her goal is to ensure that no women die of childbirth complications.
Professor Soo Downe, BA(hons), RM, MSc, PhD
Soo spent 15 years working as a midwife in various clinical, research, and project development roles. In January 2001 she joined the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in England, where she is now the Professor of Midwifery Studies.
She set up the UCLan Midwifery Studies Research Unit in October 2002. She now leads the Research in Childbirth and Health (ReaCH) group. She currently chairs the UK Royal College of Midwives Campaign for Normal Birth steering committee, and she co-chairs the ICM Research Standing Committee, and is a member of the Global Alliance of Nursing and Midwifery (GANM) Steering Group.
She has been a member of a number of national midwifery committees, and of the UK Medical Research Council College of Experts. Her main research focus is the nature of, and cultures around, normal birth. She is the editor of Normal Birth, Evidence and Debate (2004, 2008), and the founder of the International Normal Birth Research conference series.
As well as running a number of locally funded projects, she is currently the principle investigator on two funded studies, the SHIP trial of the use of self-hypnosis in labour (funded by the NHS RfPB) and an EU COST Action on childbirth contexts, cultures and consequences, which currently involves 17 countries.
SUE BREE
Sue works as a self-employed midwife in a rural community in the north of the North Island of New Zealand.
She has been a midwife for over 30 years and in that time has seen huge changes in the delivery of maternity services in New Zealand, especially since 1990 when midwives regained their right to practise autonomously.
Prior to this she was the midwife manager of a primary maternity facility and a domiciliary midwife attending homebirths.
Sue’s overseas midwifery experience includes three years working in Papua New Guinea and six months working as a midwife in a Red Cross Refugee Camp in Malaysia for Vietnamese boat people.
Sue is a past president of the New Zealand College of Midwives (2002-2008) and in that role was the NZ delegate to ICM congress on two occasions. She now fills a role as elder to the governing body of the NZ College of Midwives. She was a member of the inaugural Midwifery Council of New Zealand. She continues to represent midwives on several national maternity committees.
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