Speakers

Prof. Dr. A. F. M. Ruhal Haque, MP

Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Bangladesh

Prof. Dr. A. F. M. Ruhal Haque, MP is a renowned orthopaedic surgeon and the Minister of Health and Family Welfare in Bangladesh. A fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in the UK and the International College of Surgeons in the USA, he began his career in Bangladesh in 1968 after graduating from the Dhaka Medical College.
He served in the UK’s National Health Service from 1972 to 1981 while acquiring higher training in Orthopaedics. On his return to Bangladesh, he served in various medical colleges, hospitals and trauma centres, among them the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation and the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, as associate professor and then as professor and chairman.

A member of several national and international social and health service organisations, Prof. Haque has presented papers at home and abroad, and has had his research published in national and international journals. Prof. Haque is the president of the International College of Surgeons – Bangladesh, chairs an orthopaedic hospital in Dhaka, and has founded a non-profit making hospital in his village.

Dr Ala Alwan

Assistant Director-General, Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health

Dr Ala Alwan is Assistant Director-General for Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health since 1 February 2008. Dr Alwan graduated in Medicine from the University of Alexandria. He practiced medicine in Scotland and obtained his postgraduate training and qualifications in the United Kingdom. Following his return to Iraq, his home country, he held several positions in clinical and academic medicine and public health. He was Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Mustansiriya University, Baghdad.

In 1992, he joined WHO as Regional Adviser for Noncommunicable Diseases in the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. He then served as WHO Representative in Oman, and Director, Division of Health Systems Development in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. In 1998, Dr Alwan was reassigned to WHO headquarters as Director for Noncommunicable Diseases Prevention and then Director of the Department of Noncommunicable Diseases Management. In 2001, he became WHO Representative in Jordan. From 2003 to 2005, he was Minister of Education and Minister of Health in the Government of Iraq. From 2005 to January 2008, he was Representative of the Director-General and Assistant Director-General for Health Action in Crises.

Sir George Alleyne

Sir George Alleyne, OCC, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.A.C.P. (Hon), DSc (Hon), a native of Barbados, became Director of the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB), Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO) on 1 February 1995 and completed a second four-year term on 31 January 2003. In 2003 he was elected Director Emeritus of the PASB. In February 2003, Mr. Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the United Nations appointed him as his Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean. He was reconfirmed in this position by the current Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon. In October 2003 he was appointed Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. He currently holds an Adjunct professorship on the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Alleyne has received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including prestigious decorations and national honors from many countries of the Americas. In 1990, he was made Knight Bachelor by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for his services to Medicine. In 2001, he was awarded the Order of the Caribbean Community, the highest honor that can be conferred on a Caribbean national.

Professor Jean Claude Mbanya

Professor Jean Claude Mbanya is President of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF). He is Professor of Medicine and Endocrinology at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon and Consultant Physician, Director of the Health in Transition Research Group, Director of the National Obesity Centre and Chief of the Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases Unit at the Hospital Central in Yaoundé.

He was instrumental in the IDF-led ‘Unite for Diabetes’ campaign, which led to passage of the United Nations Day Resolution on Diabetes in December 2006. He now steers IDF strategic direction to encourage governments to implement policies for the treatment, care and prevention of diabetes.

Prof Mbanya also serves on several WHO advisory groups: the WHO African Advisory Committee on Health Research and Development; the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Chronic Degenerative Diseases Diabetes; and the WHO Committee on Classification and Diagnosis of Diabetes.

He is a recipient of many international research grants and awards including the American Diabetes Association’s 2004 Harold Rifkin award for Distinguished International Service in the Cause of Diabetes and the 2009 Philip Sherlock Award of the University Outreach Diabetes Group, Jamaica, for his outstanding international service in the field of diabetes etc.

Dr. Karen Sealey

Special Adviser, UN and Partnerships
Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization
WHO Office at the United Nations

Karen Sealey is a physician-planner, public specialist with a wide breadth of experience in public health administration and planning at the national and international levels. Before joining PAHO/WHO she worked in New York City and was the Director of Health Planning in the Ministry of Health, Trinidad and Tobago. 

In her 22 years with PAHO, Dr. Sealey has held several senior positions, working at the national, subregional and regional levels. Among her achievements have been spearheading the development and adoption of the Caribbean Health Promotion Charter, establishing the Awards for Excellence in Health Journalism in that subregion, and publishing the inaugural edition of Health Conditions in the Caribbean.

During her secondment to UNAIDS as the Director of the Caribbean Regional Support Team, Dr. Sealey was a strong advocate for meaningful inclusion of the Persons living with HIV, civil society and the private sector in the response to HIV, established the Caribbean Women, Girls and HIV program and published the first regional comparison of progress towards the UNGAS indicators – Keeping Score.

Since her return to PAHO in August 2009, Dr. Sealey has been serving as its Special Adviser for UN Matters and Partnerships in the WHO Office at the UN. Among her functions is to support the Permanent Missions from the Group of Latin American and Caribbean countries to the UN, on health development matters; thus she supported the CARICOM Missions in the process for the adoption of the resolutions which called for convening of the high level meeting on the prevention and control of non communicable diseases.