Speakers

Dr. Maha Barakat held the post of Director General of the Health Authority Abu Dhabi 2013-2017. Previously, she was the Co-Founder, Medical & Research Director and Consultant Endocrinologist at the Imperial College London Diabetes Centre in Abu Dhabi.

She has been a member of the Social Development Committee of the Executive Council of the Government of Abu Dhabi, and Board member of several Government of Abu Dhabi-related entities including the Board of Trustees of Khalifa University, the Family Development Foundation, the Quality Conformity Council, and the Statistics Centre. Internationally, she was appointed a member of the “Roll Back Malaria” Partnership Board.

For her work to the community in the UAE, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2010, was awarded the Abu Dhabi Prize in 2011, and given the Imperial College Medal in 2013.

Simon Conesa started his career as a scientist, pursuing a PhD in analytical chemistry & designing innovative quality control systems. After pursuing an international MBA at the Instituto de Empresa business school, he focused his career in international development when joined Dr. Prashant Yadav at the MIT-Zaragoza Logistics Center mapping pharmaceutical supply chains in Africa & the Middle-East. Consultancy work followed for UNICEF’s Supply Division to improve supply chains by using mobile technologies in the field. This work inspired him to create the Global Health Consortium, a collaborative LinkedIn group with over five hundred leading professionals. Furthermore, this work was key in becoming an Advisor for the Best Practices and Innovation working group at the UN Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Woman and Children in 2012.

As an independent consultant, he served as project manager for a USTDA-funded project to improve the pharmaceutical supply chain for the Ministry of Health in Egypt from 2011 to 2014. Concurrently during 2013, he worked as a supply chain consultant for a World Bank-funded project to improve access in underserved areas in the Republic of Moldova. After joining MSH in 2014, he worked as the lead technical advisor for health systems strengthening in Ukraine, including the high-level design of the pharmaceutical reimbursement policy, and synergistic-specific interventions, such as enabling the use of framework agreement contracts and establishing price monitoring and price referencing mechanisms. Additionally, he designed an intervention to improve access to medicines for non-communicable diseases in Kenya in a partnership with Novartis. His current position as Global Logistics Advisor focuses on the digitalization of their entire Supply Chain.

Chibuzo Eneh is a public health professional with a focus on supply chain and logistics, working with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

Since January 2016, she has led the national logistics and supply chain management Team at the country’s national public health institute. In addition to this, she is part of the Team that has led on the development and implementation of a national emergency preparedness and response plan for Nigeria. This role entails strategic planning and creating an efficiently managed and evidence-based organization with a clear focus on health promotion and disease prevention.  Also, Chibuzo has led aspects of outbreak response activities, specifically for Lassa fever, monkeypox, yellow fever and cholera.

In addition to the above, Chibuzo has 16 years’ experience working on Quality Management Systems and good manufacturing (GMP) inspections of Pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. She was a pioneer staff of the quality management system of drug evaluation and research directorate of the National Agency For Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) where she was responsible for leading and providing guidance to Pharmaceutical manufacturers and Inspectors on GMP. She has extensive experience in quality improvement, capacity building, and guideline & policy development for pharmaceutical manufacturers and the Nigerian food and drug regulatory health system.

Chibuzo is keenly interested in public health leadership, supply chain and logistics in the context of outbreaks. She co-led the country’s Joint External Evaluation and has very strong management skills with a track record of achieving targets to drive change and advance health policy solutions.

Dr. Georges Ki-Zerbo is a Medical Doctor and International Health and Development expert specialized in Infectious Diseases, Epidemiology and community health. He is currently the WHO Head of Office and Representative in Guinea based in Conakry.

Following work as clinician lecturer and researcher in Senegal and Burkina Faso, he joined the WHO in 2004 at the Regional Office for Africa (Harare, Zimbabwe and Brazzaville – Congo) as Regional Adviser for HIV Care and Treatment (March 2004-November 2006), then as acting WHO representative in Equatorial Guinea (November 2006 to March 2007) and from November 2006 to March 2007 as Malaria Programme Manager (WHO/AFRO Brazzaville). He has coordinated various programs including the Communicable Diseases Program Area for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases (WHO/AFRO Brazzaville) and the WHO/AFRO Inter-country Support Team for Central Africa based in Libreville, Gabon. During the Ebola Virus Outbreak, he contributed to establish the PHEOC (Public Health Emergencies Operations Center) in July 2014.

He is committed to the attainment of the SDGs through evidence based, quality and cost-effective interventions taking into account policy, socio-cultural and economic determinants and risk reduction, and believes in country engagement and ownership, policy dialogue and partner’s harmonization and alignment accelerated progress towards Universal Health SDGs.

Sarah Rich is a Senior Advisor for Sexual and Reproductive Health at the Women’s Refugee Commission. She has worked in sexual and reproductive health, gender, and poverty reduction advocacy, programs, and evaluation for 15 years across a wide range of settings, including Nigeria, DRC, Pakistan, Malawi, Senegal, India, and the United States. She currently leads WRC’s work on improving access to reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition services in Northeast Nigeria through community and primary health care programming. She also co-leads the Inter-agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises’s sub-working groups on Supplies/Logistics and Voluntary Contraception. Prior to joining WRC, Sarah was a Senior Technical Advisor for the International Consortium for Emergency Contraception, where she led advocacy strategies to integrate emergency contraception into reproductive health and post-rape care efforts at the global and national levels. She also co-chaired the Family Planning Technical Resource Team of the UN Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children. Sarah received her Master's in Public Affairs with a focus on International Development from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Sidharth Rupani supports LLamasoft’s customers and partners in Africa, India, and the Middle East. In his 6 years at LLamasoft, he has managed and executed a number of global health supply chain design projects in various countries. Across these countries his work has focused on designing and evaluating the right supply chains for health systems – covering essential and program medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics. He has also led private sector supply chain design engagements across a variety of industries including retail, food and beverage, chemicals, and FMCG.

Prior to LLamasoft, Sidharth was a Senior Consultant in the Inhouse Consulting group of global logistics leader, DHL. At DHL, he advised top executives in DHL’s business units (Global Forwarding, Supply Chain, Express) as well as DHL’s most important customers. 

Sidharth obtained his PhD from the Engineering Systems Division at MIT, where his research focused on the processes of product design and development at large engineering companies. At MIT, his work received an IBM fellowship awarded to projects that had potential to deliver strategic and operational value to today’s most innovative companies. He completed his bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he was selected as the best undergraduate student.

Sidharth was born and raised in Mumbai, India and has a deep interest in helping organizations in Low and Middle Income Countries navigate their supply chain challenges