A global group of experts on essential medicines

Co-chair

Andy Gray

University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Andy Gray BPharm, MSc (Pharm), PhD, FPS, FFIP is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Pharmacology, Discipline of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. He is co-director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Pharmaceutical Policy and Evidence Based Practice. He is also Honorary Senior Scientist: Consultant Pharmacist for the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA). He was appointed to the South African National Essential Medicines List Committee in 2013 and chairs its Expert Review Committee. He currently serves on three technical advisory committees at the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA). He is a Member of the WHO Expert Panel on Drug Policies and Management.

Co-chair

Hans V. Hogerzeil

University of Groningen, the Netherlands

Hans V. Hogerzeil, MD, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Global Health at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is best known for his career at the World Health Organization, which he joined in 1985, serving as Secretary of the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (1999–2008) and as WHO Director for Essential Medicines and Pharmaceutical Policies until 2011. His work centres on access to essential medicines as part of the progressive realization of the right to health, national medicines policy, and pharmaceutical systems in low- and middle-income countries; in 2015 he founded the Global Health Law Groningen Research Centre. He qualified as a medical doctor at Leiden University and holds a PhD in public health.

Co-chair

Veronika Wirtz

Boston University School of Public Health, USA

Dr. Veronika J. Wirtz is a professor of Global Health at the Boston University School of Public Health, where she is also the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center in Pharmaceutical Policy. Between 2014 and 2016, she was the Co-Chair and lead author of The Lancet Commission report Essential Medicines for Universal Health Coverage and is currently the Co-Chair of The Lancet Commission Accelerating Progress on Essential Medicines. She is a visiting professor at the National Institute of Public Health (INSP), Mexico, where she was a faculty member between 2005 and 2012. Dr. Wirtz received her training as a pharmacist from Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany and her Master of Science degree and her doctorate degree from the University of London, UK.

Commissioner

Saleh Aljadeeah

Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium

Saleh Aljadeeah is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. His work sits at the intersection of access to medicines, drug utilization research, and health systems in humanitarian and conflict-affected settings. He has led and co-led national and multi-country projects focused on medicine access for forcibly displaced populations and in fragile contexts. His work has received international recognition, including awards from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the University of Oxford, and the City of Bayreuth. Dr. Aljadeeah holds a PhD in Drug Utilization Research (University of Bayreuth, Germany), an MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care (University of Oxford, UK), and a degree in Pharmacy (Damascus University, Syria).

Commissioner

Yusi Anggriani

Universitas Pancasila, Jakarta, Indonesia

Yusi Anggriani is a Professor of Community and Social Pharmacy in the Faculty of Pharmacy at Universitas Pancasila in Jakarta, Indonesia. She is currently the head of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy Management and Services Studies (CEPHAS). She has experience working with the Ministry of Health, the Indonesian Food and Drug Agency, the National Health Insurance Bureau, and other national institutions for around 20 years in medicine access and pharmaceutical policy. She has been appointed as a member of the National Pricing Experts Committee (Ministry of Health) and Technical Advisory Group on Pricing Policies for Medicines (WHO). She also has experience conducting research on access to medicines, including medicine pricing policy with the World Health Organization and United Nations Development Program, Health Action International, and other international universities. She holds a PhD from Universiti Sains Malaysia and bachelor's and master's degrees from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia.

Commissioner

Brook K. Baker

Northeastern University School of Law, USA

Brook K. Baker is a Professor Emeritus at Northeastern University School of Law. As a senior policy analyst for Health GAP (Global Access Project), Professor Baker has campaigned for access to medicines for HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and other health conditions. He has consulted widely on IP, trade, and regulatory policies, including with multiple countries, the African Union, NEPAD, ASEAN, CARICOM, DfID, WHO, Millennium Development Goals Project, Global Fund, UNAIDS, UNDP, Unitaid, Medicines Patent Pool, Global Commission on HIV and the Law, ACT-Accelerator, and others. He has served as a key advisor, alternate and board member of the NGO delegation to Unitaid. He holds a JD from Northeastern University School of Law and a BA in economics from Harvard College.

Commissioner

Melissa Barber

Médecins Sans Frontières & Yale University, USA

Melissa Barber, PhD, is a health economist and policy advisor at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and an affiliate of the Yale Collaboration for Regulatory Rigor, Integrity, and Transparency (CRRIT); she was previously a postdoctoral fellow jointly appointed at Yale Law School and Yale School of Medicine. Her research combines economics, political science, and law to analyse pharmaceutical markets and their effects on public health, with particular emphasis on estimating the cost of producing medicines and comparing those costs to market prices to inform pricing and access policy. Her widely cited work has estimated cost-based prices for insulins, GLP-1 agonists, and other essential medicines, often with Médecins Sans Frontières, and she has worked with WHO, the Global Fund, the World Bank, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. Dr. Barber earned a PhD in Population Health Sciences from Harvard University.

Commissioner

Esteban Burrone

Medicines Patent Pool

Esteban Burrone has over 20 years of experience working in the field of access to health technologies. He is currently the Head of Policy, Strategy and Market Access at the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), an institution he contributed to establishing in 2010 to promote access to affordable health products in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), through licensing and technology transfer. Esteban holds an MSc in Development Studies from the LSE and an MPH from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Commissioner

Isabel Emmerick

UMass Chan Medical School, USA

Isabel Cristina Martins Emmerick, PhD, is a Brazilian pharmacist and health-systems researcher whose career spans pharmaceutical policy and access to medicines. She held a pharmaceutical-policy research fellowship in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, and worked at the Center for Pharmaceutical Policies (NAF) at ENSP/Fiocruz, a PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre. Her research has examined access to and use of medicines in Brazil and Latin America, including the Farmácia Popular medicine-subsidy programme. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at UMass Chan Medical School. Dr. Emmerick holds a BPharm from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and an MSc and PhD in public health from the National School of Public Health (ENSP), Fiocruz.

Commissioner

Ellen 't Hoen

Medicines Law & Policy

Ellen 't Hoen, LLM PhD, is a lawyer and public health advocate. She is the director of Medicines Law & Policy. From 1999 until 2009 she was the director of policy for Médecins sans Frontières' Access Campaign. In 2009 she joined UNITAID to set up the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP). She was the MPP's first executive director until 2012. She has worked as an advisor to governments, NGOs and international organisations. She has published widely on medicines law and policy issues. Her book “Private Patents and Public Health: Changing intellectual property rules for public health” was awarded the Prix Prescrire in 2017 for being a “major reference work on access to medicines”. Between 2005 and 2021 she was listed 5 times as one of the 50 most influential people in intellectual property by the journal Managing Intellectual Property. In 2020, she was appointed Officer of the Order of Oranje-Nassau for her work on access to affordable medicines. She has a Master of Laws from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD from the University of Groningen.

Commissioner

Vitor Ido

University of São Paulo, Brazil

Vitor Henrique Pinto Ido is a Professor of Commercial Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and previously served as a Programme Officer in the Health, Intellectual Property and Biodiversity Programme of the South Centre in Geneva. His work focuses on intellectual property and access to medicines and health technologies, pharmaceutical patents, TRIPS flexibilities, and the relationship between innovation policy and public health, supporting developing-country negotiators across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He has co-edited volumes on implementing intellectual-property flexibilities for access to medicines and vaccines. Ido holds a PhD, a master's, and an LLB in law and a bachelor's in social sciences, all from the University of São Paulo, as well as a master's in economic law from Sciences Po (Paris).

Commissioner

Ke Xu

World Health Organization

Ke Xu is a health economist with the World Health Organization, recognized for her work on health financing, financial protection, and universal health coverage. She has led WHO's work on health accounts and global health expenditure and has served as team leader for health care financing at the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific. Her research on catastrophic health expenditure and household financial protection, published in The Lancet and other journals, speaks directly to how countries pay for and afford essential medicines. She holds an MD and a PhD in health economics.

Commissioner

Uhjin Kim

World Health Organization

Uhjin Kim is Unit Head for Access to Medicines, Technologies, Diagnostics and Health Products (AMT) at the World Health Organization Regional Office for South-East Asia (SEARO), a role taken up in 2026 after serving as the office's Regional Adviser for Essential Drugs and Medicines. The work spans equitable access to essential medicines and health products, medicines pricing and regulatory policy, and antimicrobial use surveillance and stewardship. Earlier WHO postings included technical officer for pharmaceuticals in the Western Pacific and Papua New Guinea and country liaison officer in Kiribati, and the career began as chief pharmacist with the Ministry of Health in Nauru. Kim holds an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics.

Commissioner

Shaffi Fazaludeen Koya

WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean

Shaffi Fazaludeen Koya is currently the Regional Antimicrobial Resistance Adviser a.i and the AMR, IPC and One Health Unit lead at the WHO's Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. In the past, he worked in the areas of health security and high threat pathogens, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, and vector borne and zoonotic diseases with ministries of health, Médecins sans Frontières, and WHO. He holds a Doctoral degree in public health leadership, management and policy from Boston University, besides his medical, public health, and management degrees from India.

Commissioner

Deus Mubangizi

World Health Organization

Deusdedit (Deus) Mubangizi is Director of the Health Products Policy and Standards Department at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, appointed in 2024. Originally from Uganda, his work spans pharmaceutical policy and standards, the regulation and prequalification of health products, quality assurance, diversified local manufacturing, and the supply of and access to essential medicines and health technologies. Before this directorship he led WHO's Prequalification Unit, having joined the Organization in 2008 with extensive inspection experience. Earlier he was Chief Inspector of Drugs in Uganda and a founding staff member of Uganda's National Drug Authority, where he helped establish the country's GMP inspection systems. He holds a BPharm from Makerere University, Uganda.

Commissioner

Katrina Perehudoff

University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Katrina Perehudoff, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and Co-Director of its Law Centre for Health and Life. Her interdisciplinary work across law and health sciences focuses on international and European pharmaceutical law and policy, equitable access to medicines, medicine price transparency, and the application of human rights frameworks to pharmaceutical accountability. She holds a Dutch Veni grant examining the European Union's role in global access to medicines and has advised the WHO Regional Office for Europe, the European Parliament, national parliaments, and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard. Dr. Perehudoff holds a PhD from the University of Groningen, an LLM in European law from Ghent University, and an MSc in international health from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Commissioner

Chittawan Poonsiri

HITAP, Thailand

Chittawan Poonsiri is a pharmacist by training, with early experience as a hospital pharmacist providing oncology care in Thailand. She is currently a project associate at the Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP), where her work focuses on economic evaluation and policy-relevant research to inform equitable health system decisions. Her research interests include Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (DCEA), methods to integrate equity into health technology assessment, and access to essential medicines. She also serves as part of the secretariat for the Health Economics Working Group under Thailand's National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), supporting evidence-informed and equity-oriented medicines policy. She holds a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) from Khon Kaen University, Thailand.

Commissioner

Huma Rasheed

University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan

Huma Rasheed is a pharmaceutical scientist and Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutics at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) in Lahore, Pakistan, and was previously associated with the University College of Pharmacy, University of the Punjab. Her work centres on the quality of medicines in low- and middle-income countries, pharmacy practice, pharmaceutical policy, and the availability, prices, and affordability of essential medicines, including low-cost quality-control methods for essential antibiotics. With more than two decades of experience across regulation, clinical pharmacy, education, and quality assurance, she has engaged with WHO on medicine quality and access. Rasheed holds a PhD from the University of Würzburg, Germany, focused on substandard and falsified medicines, and a BPharm from the University of the Punjab.

Commissioner

Libby Roughead

Adelaide University, Australia

Libby Roughead is Director of the Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre, Adelaide University, and current Chair of the International Society to Improve Use of Medicines. Libby has led 75 national interventions to improve use of medicines in Australia. Libby is a Fellow of the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology, a former Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, member of the Australian Government Drug Utilisation Sub-Committee and member of the Medication Safety and Quality Advisory Committee, Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Libby has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization.

Commissioner

Max Salcher

Austrian National Public Health Institute

Maximilian Salcher-Konrad is a Senior Health Expert and Deputy Head of Pharmacoeconomics at Gesundheit Österreich GmbH (Austrian National Public Health Institute). He conducts research on medicine pricing, reimbursement, and procurement and supports pharmaceutical reform initiatives in the Austrian health system. His PhD, obtained at the London School of Economics (LSE), examined uncertainty in regulatory decision-making and the role of non-randomised evidence in marketing authorisation. In his previous role as a Research Fellow at the LSE, his research focused on comparative effectiveness, methodological aspects of evidence generation, pharmaceutical regulation, and economic evaluation.

Commissioner

Sangeeta Sharma

Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences, India

Dr. Sangeeta Sharma is a pharmacologist and health systems expert with 30 years of leadership in essential medicines, antimicrobial stewardship, patient safety, and quality of care. She currently works as Professor and Head, Neuropsychopharmacology at the Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences. She has led national and international efforts on Standard Treatment Guidelines, Essential Medicines Lists, AMR containment, and large scale capacity building for clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, and policymakers. She has served on multiple WHO expert groups, including the Expert Committee on Essential Medicines, and has authored influential books, guidelines, and policy tools advancing rational medicine use. She is honorary President of the Delhi Society for Promotion of Rational Use of Drugs (DSPRUD) and holds an MD in pharmacology and an MBBS, both from the University of Delhi.

Commissioner

Hiiti Sillo

World Health Organization

Hiiti B. Sillo is Unit Head for Regulation and Safety in the Department of Regulation and Prequalification at the World Health Organization in Geneva. He leads WHO efforts to strengthen national and regional regulatory systems for medical products, promoting regulatory harmonization, convergence, work-sharing, and reliance, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Before joining WHO in 2018, he served as Director General of the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA), the predecessor of the Tanzania Medicines and Medical Devices Authority, and has been closely associated with the WHO Prequalification programme and the maturity-level framework for medicines regulators. Sillo is a pharmacist by training and holds an MSc in pharmaceutical services and medicines control.

Commissioner

Fatima Suleman

University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Fatima Suleman is a Research Professor in the School of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal and Co-Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Pharmaceutical Policy and Evidence Based Practice. She is a former Prince Claus Chair of Development and Equity: Affordable (Bio)Therapeutics for Public Health (2016–2018) at Utrecht University. Her work has concentrated in the area of pharmaceutical policy, with a focus on ensuring affordability and access to medicines. Her work has led to technical advice being provided on pharmaceutical policy for several countries in Africa and Asia in the last 17 years. She holds a PhD in public health sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Commissioner

Jing Sun

Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College

Jing Sun is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Policy at the School of Health Policy and Management, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College (CAMS & PUMC). Her research areas focus on pharmaceutical policy analysis, specialized in pharmaco-economics and pharmaco-epidemiology.

Commissioner

Klara Tisocki

World Health Organization

Klara Tisocki, PhD, is a clinical pharmacologist at the World Health Organization, where she leads the team on affordability, access and pricing of medicines at WHO headquarters in Geneva. She has more than 25 years of experience strengthening pharmaceutical systems in low- and middle-income countries, working across nearly 50 countries in Africa and Asia on medicines selection, regulation, procurement and supply, pricing and affordability, appropriate use, and antimicrobial resistance. From 2012 she served as WHO Regional Adviser for Essential Medicines and Health Technologies in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia Regional Offices before moving to WHO headquarters. She holds a pharmacy degree from Budapest, Hungary, and a Master's in clinical pharmacology and a PhD from the United Kingdom.

Commissioner

Adriana Velazquez

World Health Organization

Adriana Velázquez Berumen is a biomedical engineer with more than 40 years of experience in health technology. Until her retirement from the World Health Organization in 2025, she was Senior Adviser and Team Lead for Medical Devices and In Vitro Diagnostics at WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, where she led efforts to improve access to safe, affordable, quality medical devices and diagnostics, including the development of the WHO Model List of Essential In Vitro Diagnostics and the MeDevIS information platform. Before joining WHO in 2008, she was the founding Director General of Mexico's National Centre for Health Technology Excellence (CENETEC) and worked for over 15 years as a clinical engineer in Mexican hospitals; she now continues as an independent advocate for access to medical devices for all. She trained as a biomedical engineer at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico and holds an MSc in clinical engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Commissioner

Olivier Wouters

Brown University School of Public Health, USA

Olivier J. Wouters, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at Brown University's School of Public Health and a visiting faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on pharmaceutical economics and policy, particularly drug pricing and access to medicines in high- and middle-income countries. His work has been published in leading journals, including Health Affairs, JAMA, The Lancet, and The New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Wouters holds a Ph.D. in Health Policy and an M.Sc. in Health Economics, both from the London School of Economics.

Commissioner

Prashant Yadav

Council on Foreign Relations

Prashant Yadav is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a globally recognized expert in healthcare supply chains, with extensive publications on health product manufacturing, procurement, and distribution. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Economist, Nature, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, and he has frequently appeared on NPR, BBC, CNN, CBS, and CNBC. He has worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and held faculty roles at INSEAD, the MIT-Zaragoza Logistics Program, and the University of Michigan. He has received best paper awards from leading scientific bodies, serves on boards of global organizations and social enterprises, and has provided expert testimony before the U.S. Congress and other international legislative bodies. He holds degrees in chemical engineering, an MBA, and a PhD in Management Science.