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Peter Salama - Directeur de la Santé

© UNICEF/HQ05-2323/Susan Markisz

Dr. Peter Salama

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Dr. Peter Salama is a physician and epidemiologist with more than 10 years' experience in international health, nutrition and HIV. As the present Chief of Health for UNICEF, he is responsible for overseeing the organization's work in maternal-newborn-child health, immunization, HIV, health systems, and health policy and research.

Prior to his appointment to lead the UNICEF Health Section in 2006, Dr. Salama was responsible for the Child Survival and Immunization Programmes. Before moving to New York, he was the principal advisor for HIV/AIDS in Africa for USAID, where, as a member of the senior management team of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), he led the pediatric HIV and PMTCT technical working groups.

Between 2002 and 2004, Dr. Salama was responsible for UNICEF's Health and Nutrition Programmes in Afghanistan. Together with the interim government, World Bank and other partners, he helped develop the country's new health policy focusing on maternal and child health. Dr. Salama contributed to the development and implementation of a new performance based system for providing health services across the country that has achieved a nearly 20% decline in under-5 mortality in the last three years.

Dr. Salama began his international career with the non-government organizations, Doctors Without Borders and Concern Worldwide, in Thailand, Burundi and Southern Sudan. In these roles he helped to define new ways of assessing and treating severe undernutrition in adults and adolescents. Before joining UNICEF, Dr. Salama had been a visiting professor of nutrition at Tufts University and visiting scientist at the CDC in the International Emergencies Branch where he responded to crises in Kosovo, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone. In this capacity, he led research on measles that helped define the target age group for vaccination programmes globally.

A citizen of Australia, Dr. Salama obtained his medical degree in Melbourne, completed his epidemiology training as an EIS Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and received his Masters of Public Health from Harvard University. He has won numerous awards in international health at Harvard and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), including a Fulbright Scholarship, a Harkness Fellowship in Public Policy and the Schnitker Award for International Health. Dr. Salama's research interests include pediatric HIV, the treatment of severe malnutrition, vaccine-preventable diseases and measuring the effects of famine and human rights abuses during war.

About UNICEF  & Child Survival
In recent years, UNICEF's programme for child survival, growth and development has grown to a 1.5 billion USD programme that works in more than 150 countries.

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