Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe

Zsuzsanna Jakab took up her duties as Regional Director on 1 February 2010.

A native of Hungary, she has held a number of high-profile national and international public health policy positions in the last three decades.

She began her career in Hungary's Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in 1975, being responsible for external affairs, including relations with WHO. In 1991, she moved to the WHO Regional Office for Europe, where she worked in various capacities, including coordinator of the Policy and Country and the EUROHEALTH programmes, and Director of the Country Health Development Department and then the Division of Information, Evidence and Communication. In October 2000, she was appointed Director of the Division of Administration and Management Support in the Regional Office, taking responsibility for strategic and operational planning, the work of the WHO collaborating centres in Europe, legal matters and financial administration.

Ms Jakab moved back to Hungary in 2002 to become Secretary of State at the Ministry of Health, Social and Family Affairs, where she managed Hungary's preparations for European Union (EU) accession in the area of public health. She played a key role in the negotiations leading up to the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, held in Budapest in June 2004.

Between March 2005 and January 2010, Ms Jakab served as the founding Director of the EU's European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, Sweden. During her five years at its helm, she built ECDC into an internationally respected centre of excellence in the fight against infectious diseases.

Born in 1951 in Hungary, Ms Jakab holds a Master's degree from the Faculty of Humanities, Eötvös Lóránd University of Sciences, Budapest; a postgraduate degree from the University of Political Sciences, Budapest; a diploma in public health from the Nordic School of Public Health, Gothenburg, Sweden; and a postgraduate diploma from the Hungarian National Institute of Public Administration and Management.