Zafarullah Mirza is a Pakistani politician who served as a Special Assistant to the Prime Minister for Health. He was appointed by Prime Minister

Imran Khan Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi ( ur}; born 5 October 1952) is a Pakistani politician and former Cricket captain who served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Pakistan from August 2018 to until April 2022, when he was ousted through a no-confidenc ...

on 23 April 2019. Before this, he was leading the Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property team at WHO headquarters in

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...

, Switzerland, for six years.

Career

Zafar Mirza has served as the Director of Healthcare System Development at the

WHO Who or WHO may refer to: * Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun * Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism * World Health Organization Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book '' Horton He ...

Regional Office for the

Eastern Mediterranean Eastern Mediterranean is a loose definition of the eastern approximate half, or third, of the Mediterranean Sea, often defined as the countries around the Levantine Sea. It typically embraces all of that sea's coastal zones, referring to communi ...

. He is a medical doctor with post-graduation in Public Health in Developing Countries from

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a member institution of the University of London that specialises in public health and tropical medicine. The inst ...

and a clinical stint in mental health. He also served as a Regional Adviser for Essential Medicines and Pharmaceutical Policies in the WHO Regional Office for 7 years prior to moving to WHO headquarters. For 12 years before joining WHO, he was a founder Executive Director of a civil society organization – The Network for Consumer Protection in Pakistan. He has a long standing experience of working at national, regional and global levels in public and private health sectors. He has extensively travelled, published and contributed to improving public health in many countries. On 6 July 2020, Mirza tested positive for

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. On 29 July 2020, Mirza announced that he was resigning from his post as Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health. The resignation was subsequently accepted by the prime minister.

References

Living people 21st-century Pakistani politicians Imran Khan administration Year of birth missing (living people) Pakistani public health doctors Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf politicians {{Pakistan-politician-stub