A message from The Union's Executive Director, José Luis Castro, welcoming Victor Zamora as the Union's Country Director in Peru.
It gives me great pleasure to announce Victor Zamora as The Union’s Country Director in Peru.
Victor is a Peruvian physician with a Master’s degree in Health Management, Planning and Policy and postgraduate studies in health economics and pharmacoeconomics.
He is very experienced at working in complex environments and in different settings - nationally and internationally - with bilateral and multilateral international organisations. He has served at the Ministry of Health of Peru as health manager at the local, regional and national level. During the last 15 years he has worked also for USAID, the UK’s Department of International Development, the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, the Pan American Health Organization/the World Health Organization in more than 10 countries in Latin America. He is also the founder of ForoSalud – the largest Peruvian network of civil society organisations on health.
Victor has published two books: Historia, Salud y Globalización, and La Salud Hoy: Problemas y Soluciones. He is also Visiting Professor at Cayetano Heredia University, a member of the editorial board of the magazines Digital Health and Frontiers in Public Health and a member of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcome Research (ISPOR).
Victor’s appointment comes at an important time for The Union in Latin America as we strengthen our relationships and expand our impact.
In Peru, tuberculosis (TB) remains a serious public health threat with an estimated incidence of 37,000 cases of drug-sensitive TB and 3,200 cases of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) in 2015. But as well as being one of the hotspots for the disease, Peru has some of the world’s highest cure rates for TB at 87% for all new cases in 2014 and 55% for MDR/RR-TB. As Country Director, Victor will oversee the growth of our technical assistance to support the management of TB and MDR-TB not only in Peru but also in Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and Paraguay.
He will also assists with the work of the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use to support the Peru government on tobacco control. He will continue The Union’s work with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and congressional committees to create and advocate for national preventative policies regulating e-cigarettes.
I hope you will all join me in welcoming Victor to The Union and supporting him in his new role.
Regards,
José Luis Castro