Assad Hafeez

Director-General of Health in the Federal Ministry of Health, Islamic Republic of Pakistan

Dr Assad Hafeez is currently the Director-General of Health in the Federal Ministry of Health, head of the Health Services Academy and the Dean of Faculty of Medicine in Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He is a leading public health specialist and Paediatrician with over 30 years of extensive clinical and management experience. He has been a member and then chair of the Executive Board of WHO and is an adjunct professor in the global health department at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Dr Hafeez has held a number of clinical, senior management and academic posts in national and international institutions. He has over 100 publications in peer reviewed journals. He is an expert researcher and has completed a number of research grants as Principal Investigator. He has played a significant role as federal DG in turning around the EPI situation at federal level in Pakistan during his tenure by overseeing a revamping of the entire logistics/storage functions of the programme as well as giving strategic guidance in operations at a macro level.

His main areas of interest are maternal, newborn and child health, health systems, determinants of health, social protection programmes and evidence-based policy-making. Dr Hafeez is a medical graduate with post-graduate studies in paediatrics. He holds a Fellowship of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Pakistan and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, London. He also has obtained a Masters in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a PhD in Public Health from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.