Event Detail
Dr. Francis Omaswa joins MLI
July 21, 2009
MLI welcomes Dr. Francis Omaswa as Senior Advisor. Dr. Omaswa, who brings a lifetime of public health leadership experience to MLI, will work closely with the MLI program staff and MLI country ministers to provide support, advice and assistance in successfully developing and working to implement health policy reform in the five MLI countries.
Dr. Omaswa founded the African Centre for Global Health and Social Transformation, or ACHEST, in 2008 and currently serves as Executive Director. ACHEST is an initiative which aims to promote and advocate the use of well grounded knowledge and evidence to maximize Africa's capacity to contribute and benefit from engagement with the rest of the world and to apply constructive and targeted strategic communication at all levels to catalyze the needed behavior in global health governance. From 2005 to 2008, Dr. Omaswa was the Executive Director of the Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA).
Prior to joining GHWA, Dr. Omaswa served as the Director General for Health Services in the Ministry of Health in Uganda for seven years. In this role he was responsible for the coordination of major reforms in the health sector including the introduction of SWAps and decentralization. Dr. Omaswa has also served as Chief Surgeon, Head of the Quality Assurance program in Uganda and Director of the Uganda Health Institute. He spent five years working in rural African settings testing cost-effective approaches for increasing access of the poor to quality health care and this interest and expertise will be integral to his role as Senior Advisor to MLI.
He has been active in global health and was closely involved in the establishment of the Global Stop TB Partnership, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria and was a member of the steering committee of the High Level Forum on health related MDGs.
Dr. Omaswa is a graduate of Makerere Medical School in Kampala, Uganda, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and founding President of the College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa and has qualifications in health services management.
