Dr Lindiwe Makubalo

Dr Makubalo is a South African epidemiologist, public health expert and health diplomat with extensive national and international leadership experience. She played an active role in shaping South Africa’s post-apartheid health sector reform policies and legislation. Most recently she served as Assistant Regional Director at the World Health Organization in Africa, shaping regional technical programmes; she was previously Director of Health Policy and Systems Research at WHO headquarters, and South Africa’s Health Diplomat to the United Nations.

At the National Department of Health she led work to strengthen health information systems and to implement digital health and e-health strategies for evidence-informed policymaking, and worked towards establishing telemedicine, telehealth and technology transfer initiatives to improve access to care. At WHO she established the Regional Health Data Hub, an integrated digital platform designed to strengthen interoperable health information systems and enable AI-supported analytics, predictive modelling, forecasting and precision public health for African countries. She holds a PhD in Community Medicine from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and was earlier a Research Fellow at the WHO Tropical Diseases Research Centre in Zambia and the South African Medical Research Council.