Ms Joy Phumaphi
GPMB Co-Chair and Former Minister of Health of Botswana
Biography
Joy Phumaphi is a former Minister of Health of Botswana. In addition to serving as GPMB co-Chair, she also serves as Executive Secretary of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance, Chair of Botswana National Gender Commission, co-Chair of the Rollback Malaria Partnership to End Malaria, and co-Chair of the Lancet pathfinder commission on climate change and health. She co-chaired the United Nations (UN) Secretary General’s Independent Accountability Panel for Every Woman, Every Child, Every Adolescent. She was most recently Interim co-CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
She was previously a member of the UN High-Level Panel on Global Response to Health Crises and has served as a member of the UN Reference Group on Economics, and as a UN Commissioner on HIV/AIDS and Governance. Before becoming Minister of Health, Ms. Phumaphi served the people of Botswana as Principal Local Government Auditor and subsequently as a Member of Parliament holding portfolios for Lands and Housing, where she introduced the country’s first housing policy requiring that local authorities house all destitute people. During her time as Minister of Health, she introduced the first public sector universal antiretroviral program in the developing world.
Ms. Phumaphi later joined the World Health Organization (WHO) as the Assistant Director-General for Family and Community Health and was responsible for the 2005 World Health Report, “Making Every Mother and Every Child Count”. She has also served as Vice President for Human Development at the World Bank where she oversaw a dramatic expansion of the network evaluation program. Ms. Phumaphi sits on the boards of several international organisations and is an advisor to multiple global health initiatives. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Commerce and a Master’s degree in Finance and Accounting.