Pakistan

Senator Sania Nishtar to head vaccine alliance

Senator Sania Nishtar will be the first female CEO of Gavi vaccine alliance, will take over on March 18

AFP January 11, 2024

Dr Sania Nishtar. PHOTO: TWITTER

GENEVA:

Senator Sania Nishtar, a medical doctor, will soon take the reins of the Gavi vaccine alliance, the first woman to lead it, the organisation said Thursday.

Nishtar, a former health minister, will take over as Gavi's new chief executive officer on March 18, it said.

The 60-year-old politician will replace David Marlow, who has been serving as interim CEO since long-time leader Seth Berkley left last August.

Gavi had announced last February that Mohammad Ali Pate, a Nigerian doctor and Harvard professor, would replace Berkley.

But just six weeks before he was expected to start, he decided to back out, informing Gavi that he had instead decided to "return and contribute to his home country".

Nishtar has had a range of roles within the Pakistani government, NGOs and the United Nations, during her 30-year career.

She "has built a reputation as a tireless advocate for health equity", Jose Manuel Barroso, chair of the Gavi board, said in the statement.

He hailed her as "an innovative thinker and a proven doer when it comes to solving complex challenges".

Read also: US sends vaccine trucks

Gavi is a non-profit created in 2000 to provide an array of vaccines to developing countries.

"Health starts with life-saving vaccines," Nishtar said in the statement.

While acknowledging Gavi's contribution to the field over the past 23 years, she added: "The task ahead is enormous."

Gavi says that since its inception, it has helped immunise more than a billion children, and has helped to halve child mortality in 78 lower-income countries.

That work, it says, "prevented more than 17.3 million future deaths".

It co-led the Covax initiative, alongside the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

The global scheme to ensure Covid vaccines reached people in poorer countries closed down last month after delivering nearly two billion doses to 146 territories.

COMMENTS (1)

Sophie | 9 months ago | Reply WARNING BEFORE WORKING FOR THE GAVI ALLIANCE ORGANIZATION I worked for Gavi for 8 years. I was a reference and totally dedicated to Gavi. I won several evaluations and merit excellence awards. I never made a single mistake. They squeezed me like a lemon. They over-exploited me for years to the point of exhaustion underpaying me. And when they made me very seriously ill they threw me out while I was on sick leave without the redundancy payments provided for in my employment contract. Because of them today I find myself on the street very seriously ill on disability without any financial aid promised when I signed the employment contract because they have not respected our agreements and they abuse their position and their immunity. They prevent me from being treated having deliberately stopped the payment of my disability insurance for no reason. They have no consideration whatsoever. I have the proofs of everything I say. If you want to safeguard your health and your life I strongly advise you not to work for this organization which claims to be a humanitarian organization which brags out saving lives but does not care about its dedicated employee. This is how Gavi thanked me for my years of dedication. It s shameful and scandalous.

Replying to X