HEALING a Region

Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Director, WHO, South East Asia Regional Office, on her several health initiatives and what more needs to be done

Poonam Khetrapal Singh is the first Indian woman to hold the position of Director of WHO – South East Asia Regional Office (SEARO). This isn’t just a milestone in terms of title. The former IAS officer is responsible for strategic decisions in the public healthcare realm for 11 countries.

Did you aspire to be an IAS officer? What was your relationship and exposure to healthcare and policy while growing up?

I still recall that it was my friend who gave me the form for the entrance exams for civil services. I cleared the exam and got selected for Indian Foreign Service (IFS) but I opted for Indian Administrative Service (IAS), with Punjab as my home state, as I wanted to be closest to the development work. After that there was no looking back. It was one assignment after another. Among all, I enjoyed health and finance the most and that explained my three stints in the health department of Punjab. So, it wasn’t an exposure to health while growing up, but the health sector itself that got me interested and I decided to focus my career on public health.

You’re the first woman to hold the position of Director, WHO - South East Asia Regional Office. What does that mean to you?

For me, it is an honour that the member countries of a region, that represent a fourth of the global population, have elected me, to lead and drive the health agenda for billions of people. It has its own challenges, but it’s very satisfying, especially if you are able to positively impact lives of the most vulnerable and marginalised population.

Under your aegis, the region has witnessed several milestones; how did you make this happen? What is your approach towards eliminating healthcare issues, specifically women centric (and otherwise)?

At the start of my term as Regional Director, I had a series of consultations with the ministers of health, partner organisations, academia and civil society to set the health priorities. I selected seven flagship programmes, which emerged as the key health priorities for the region to focus on. They are measles elimination and rubella control; prevention of noncommunicable diseases; ending preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths with a focus on neonatal deaths; universal health coverage; preventing and combating antimicrobial resistance, scaling up capacity for emergency risk management and finishing neglected tropical diseases such as kala azar, yaws, leprosy and lymphatic filariasis. I added accelerating efforts for tuberculosis elimination as my eighth flagship in 2017 in view of the high disease burden in our region.

WHO has been focusing efforts and resources on these priorities, and other pressing health needs. From highest level political advocacy, to providing guidelines and technical support to programmes, the strategy has been to work with governments, partners, health officials and sometimes even communities, to achieve these goals set collectively by countries and WHO.

We have seen many achievements in the last four years—South East Asia became the second WHO region to eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus; Bhutan and Maldives eliminated measles; Sri Lanka and Maldives eliminated malaria; Sri Lanka, Maldives and Thailand eliminated lymphatic filariasis; India eliminated yaws while Thailand became the first country in Asia Pacific to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV and syphilis. While the region continues to work towards reducing maternal, under five and neonatal mortality, some of our countries achieved the sustainable development goals for these, even before they were set. Significant progress has been made against other flagship priorities.