World Health Organization (WHO)
Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director General
Family, Women's and Children's Health
Dr Flavia Bustreo was appointed Assistant Director-General Family, Women's and Children's Health on 1 October 2010.
A world-renown physician with a career in international health, Dr Bustreo has been a key force in prioritizing women's and children’s health globally. Her work has focused on policy development concerning child and maternal health, policy implementation and partnership-building with a wide range of stakeholders. She has been especially instrumental in developing partnerships on maternal, newborn and child health. In 2004, she was appointed Interim Deputy Director of the Child Survival Partnership. She served as Deputy Director and then Director of The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health from 2006 to 2010.
In 2010, Dr Bustreo led the development of the United Nations Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health. In 2008, she contributed to the High Level Taskforce on International Innovative Financing for Health Systems and in 2005, to the UN Taskforce on Millennium Development Goals 4 & 5 to reduce maternal and child mortality. She played a key role in the development of the monitoring and tracking initiative for Millennium Development Goals 4 & 5 -- the Countdown to 2015 for Maternal, Newborn & Child Survival. She has published numerous academic and popular articles in the field of public health.
Maternal, newborn and child health has been a primary focus of Dr Bustreo’s work, including the introduction and implementation of the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) in countries and policy analysis. She has worked in several countries, including assignments for WHO country and regional offices in Sudan, Senegal, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Morocco, Peru, the Philippines and Uganda. She has also served at WHO’s EURO office in Copenhagen, headquarters in Geneva, at the World Bank and as a special advisor to the Norwegian Prime Minister's Initiative for MDGs 4 & 5.
Dr Bustreo earned a degree in medicine with honours and a postgraduate qualification in rehabilitation medicine from Padua University, Italy, and later obtained a M.Sc. in Communicable Disease Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has worked as a clinician with children and adolescents with disabilities, and with NGOs working with refugees in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq. Dr Bustreo speaks English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian and has studied Russian and Arabic.
Dr Flavia Bustreo is one of two PMNCH Co-Chairs on the PMNCH Board.