Abstract

Bio of the speaker: Dr. Mohammad Haqmal is an award-winning senior international public health and health system innovation expert. He has 18 years, experience of in public health projects in South & Central Asia. He is a lecturer at the University of City London, and a Ph.D. scholar at the University of Cambridge in the UK and has led multi-million-dollar projects in primary healthcare, including communicable disease, and maternal and child health at regional and national levels. He led the Afghanistan National Public Health Department of the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health from 2013-to 2017 where he managed the health service delivery projects in the country. He set up the district health system in Afghanistan in 2008-2012. In 2019 he was awarded the Public Health Hero award for the design and implementation of various community-based healthcare innovations such as the Afghanistan Healthy Village Initiative (AHVI) and the Afghanistan $1 Project to reduce maternal and child mortality.

Dr. Haqmal qualified as a medical doctor in Afghanistan in 2003. He has MSc in (Global Health and Development) from University College London in 2013; a Diploma in public health from the University of Liverpool in 2019; an Executive MBA from Preston University in Pakistan; Diploma in Monitoring and Evaluation from Afghanistan. He has carried out research in healthcare economics and communicable diseases, and project evaluations and presented his research at various international forums including American Public Health Association (APHA), International Health Economics Association (IHEA), Irish Global Health Network, and Canadian Global Health annual conferences. He also researched and designed an urban immunisation strategy in South Asia.

Most recently, Dr. Haqmal designed various innovation strategies such as CoVID19 Eliminator, District Hunting Initiative (DHI) in response to COVID19 , Provision of Health Services During Emergencies (PHSE), Healthy District Initiative (HDI), and immunization for the hard-to-reach population.

Dr. Haqmal frequently delivers lectures and public speeches at the international Universities and various prestigious forms and gives

interviews to national and international media. He is fluent in Pashto, Farsi, Arabic, and English.