Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Dr. Jean Kaseya has been elected this Saturday, February 18 by the African Heads of State, as Director General of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The election took place on the sidelines of the 36th African Union Summit, which is being held from February 18 to 19 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The candidacy of Dr. Jean Kaseya, presented by the DRC, went through a technical selection of 180 candidates at the beginning, and only two candidacies were retained in the final phase. The Congolese doctor was preferred to his Guinean competitor.
Dr. Jean Kaseya replaces Cameroonian virologist John Nkengasong, who has been leading, managing and overseeing U.S. President Joe Biden’s Global AIDS Emergency Plan since May 2022.
The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a specialized technical institution of the African Union, established to support the public health initiatives of member states and strengthen the capacity of their public health institutions to detect, prevent, control, and respond rapidly and effectively to disease threats.
Seasoned strategy and public health expert
Dr. Kaseya, 53, is a seasoned expert in strategy and public health. A graduate in medicine from the University of Kinshasa (1990-1997), Dr. Jean Kaseya also holds a Master’s degree in public health from Henri Poincaré University (Nancy 1) in France.
Prior to his appointment, he was a member of the Technical Review Panel (TRP) for the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland, since January 2023. The Technical Review Panel (TRP) is an independent group of high-level experts in various fields (HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, human rights and gender, health systems and sustainable financing) to support the work of the Global Fund. Each funding request submitted to the Global Fund is assessed by the TRP for technical merit and strategic direction. In addition to supporting the funding of effective programs, the TRP reports back to applicants, technical partners, the Secretariat and the Board on lessons learned from the review of funding requests.
Beyond making funding recommendations, the TRP also has an important role to play in the development and implementation of the Global Fund’s strategy as an advisory body to the Global Fund Board.
Clinton Health Access Initiative
Since November 2020, Dr. Jean Kaseya has also served as the Global AHDP/EIB (African Health Diagnostics Platform/European Investment Bank) Team Leader and Senior Country Director (DRC) for Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Inc. In this position, he is responsible for increasing access to high-quality, reliable, and affordable diagnostic services through a strong public-private partnership approach in sub-Saharan African countries.
As Senior Country Director DRC, Dr. Jean Kaseya leads the implementation of CHAI’s transformational and results-oriented agenda in DRC.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
From June 2020 to February 2021, Dr. Jean Kaseya served as Global Polio Team Leader in Africa for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, Unicef, Rotary, and Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), a charitable organization that brings together local, national, and international volunteers to work alongside the world’s most marginalized and vulnerable people. In this position, Dr. Jean Kaseya led the advocacy, development, implementation and monitoring of Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) in 10 priority African countries: Chad, Liberia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Congo. He liaised with country governments and Global Polio Eradication Initiative partners (WHO, UNICEF, BMGF, IFRC, ROTARY, CDC, and Gavi) to ensure the effectiveness, quality, and timeliness of EOCs in Africa.
Career at UNICEF
Prior to this, Dr. Kaseya worked for 9 years at UNICEF, including 3 years in Namibia as Chief of Child Survival and Development, after having held the same position for 4 years in Congo Brazzaville and having been, for 8 months, Senior Health Emergency Manager, based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. In this position, he managed a team of 8 international and national staff and raised US$6 million to provide emergency health, malaria, nutrition and HIV services. More than 14 million Ivorians, including 6.5 million children, benefited from this program. He was also responsible for planning, implementing, and monitoring mass campaigns, including the distribution of bed nets, polio, measles, vitamin A, and other health services.
Vaccine Alliance
Dr. Jean Kaseya was also, for two years (2009-2011), senior program director for the international organization Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, based in Geneva, Switzerland. In this capacity, he led the GAVI program for African countries, managing a budget of US$650 million. He was also responsible for measles, yellow fever, and meningitis activities.
Prior to that, from 2008 to 2009, he was technical coordinator for the World Health Organization’s Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP), based in Geneva, Switzerland. In this position, he led the development of the $571 million Meningitis A Investment Project to support the introduction of the new MenAfriVac vaccine in Africa to eradicate meningitis A as a major public health problem. The successful fundraising raised the $571 million in an innovative public-private partnership, one of the most successful in Africa, helping to reduce 97% of meningitis epidemics.
Professionnal experience in the DRC
A member of the WHO malaria vaccine team, Dr. Jean Kaseya worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the Rural and Urban Primary Health Care (SANRU) organization from January 2006 to January 2008 as country representative and project coordinator for malaria and AIDS. SANRU was the first civil society organization in the DRC to become a principal recipient of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, often referred to as “the Global Fund.
Prior to that, from December 2001 to January 2008, Dr. Jean Kaseya was a senior team leader for USAID projects in the DRC (SANRU III and AXxes). In this capacity, he led two $102 million USAID projects ($53 million for SANRU III and $49 million for AXxes) focusing on primary health care, maternal and child health, malaria, immunization, nutrition, HIV, and WASH in the DRC during the civil war that divided the DRC into four different political entities. Dr. Kaseya led a team of 22 people assigned to these 4 political entities.
Among his other positions in the DRC, Dr. Jean Kaseya was a general practitioner at Kinshasa General Hospital, medical director at Kahenba General Hospital in Bandundu Province, chief medical officer of Kahemba Zone, and senior health advisor to the former president of the DRC, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a member of the STOP (Stop Transmission of Polio) technical team of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (USA), the lead U.S. federal agency for public health protection.
