HIFA announces coordination team for Country Representatives

3 April, 2021

Did you know that HIFA has 266 country representatives around the world, all promoting the importance of access to healthcare information and spreading the word about HIFA? It is thanks to their efforts that we now have more than 20,000 members.

We're delighted to announce our new amazing Country Representative Coordination Team! Here they are:

Global coordinator
Sanchika Gupta (pictured) is an Indian healthcare specialist with eight years of experience as both clinician and public health programmer. She explored wide breadth of public health realm viz. family planning/reproductive health, maternal, adolescent and child health during her association with national and international NGOs namely INCLEN, MAMTA, Jhpiego and Pathfinder International. She acquired technical expertise in advocacy, program management, research, monitoring and evaluation throughout her fieldwork in eight Indian states (Assam, Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh). She is the nominee of ‘120 under 40: the new generation of family planning leaders’ in 2019. In the recent years, she has been associated with HIFA through its Social Media Working Group and EHS-COVID19 project. Currently, she is based in New Delhi, India and is available on email id sanchika12@gmail.com or Twitter @sanchika_gupta.
Regional coordinator - AFRO region
Didier Demassosso is a mental health practitioner, Consultant (WHO, MoPH Cameroon...), Mental health advocate, Youth advocate with 10 years experience in mental health development in Cameroon. He is also a health communicator and educationist. Email
Regional coordinator - EMRO region
Noha S Hassan (MBBCh, FETP, MPH) is a motivated and experienced public health professional with over 5 years expertise in the fields of public health, preventive medicine, social medicine, epidemiology and health policy. Noha has over 8 years experience as a qualified physician/ paediatrician in the areas of child's health, women's and maternal health in addition to 12 years experience in the domains of human development, humanitarian aids of vulnerable groups and global health as a volunteer medical student. Email
Regional coordinator - EURO region
Tomislav Mestrovic is a medical doctor and a clinical microbiologist with a PhD in biomedical sciences, and an Assistant Professor at Croatia's youngest public university, University North. He is also passionately invested in global health communication, health literacy, science journalism and science diplomacy. Tomislav was appointed by the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia as a Managing Committee Member to COST Action on evidence-based medicine run by the European Union. He holds several positions in international societies that resulted in many volunteering initiatives. Email
Regional coordinator - LAC region
Jackeline Alger, MD, PhD, is a parasitologist working at the Departamento de Laboratorio Clínico, Hospital Escuela and at the Unidad de Investigación Científica, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (UNAH), Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She is a board member of the Instituto de Enfermedades Infecciosas y Parasitologia Antonio Vidal (IAV), a non-profit organization devoted to training, advising, and conducting research in the field of infectious diseases. She combines clinical laboratory work, teaching, and research activities with mentoring students, faculty and health professionals performing health research, building interdisciplinary bridges, promoting international collaboration, and networking to advance scientific and ethical research and social innovation for health in Honduras. Email
Regional coordinator - SEARO region
Stuti Chakraborty is currently working at Christian Medical College, Vellore. She is part of the SDG 3 as well as Science Policy working group for the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth; a country correspondent for YourCommonwealth; and has been a country correspondent for IHP Global. She has also been a pioneer member for the launch of the India Chapter of Women in Global Health as a Chapter Officer. She was a youth speaker from India to shed light on the topic of ‘Gender Equity in the Healthcare Sector’ for the GHWN Youth Hub Online Conference hosted in December 2019. She has represented her country across several platforms including being a youth representative from the UN MGCY at the Global Conference on Primary Healthcare held in Astana in 2018. In her work, she advocates for young people's health with a special focus on the rights of Persons with Disabilities. She is the Head of Advocacy for Polygeia Global Health Student Think Tank. She co-founded Stimulus, a youth-led non-profit initiative that aims to raise awareness about the brain sciences. Email

 
(WPRO and North America coordinators - positions vacant)

Congratulations to all. This is a truly formidable team which includes no fewer than three HIFA Country Representatives of the Year (Jackeline 2015 & 2018, Didier 2014, and Tomislav 2020).