Professor Ximena Aguilera

Ximena Aguilera is the Director, Center of Epidemiology and Health Policy, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile and Professor, currently dedicated to teaching and research in applied epidemiology to health policy and communicable diseases. Dr Aguilera is also member of the Chilean Society of Public Health and Member of the Chilean Society of Infectious Diseases. Dr Aguilera, MD is a Specialist in Public Health, Master in Public Health, Residence in International Health at the Pan-American Health Organization and formerly Senior Advisor in Communicable Diseases (2008-10) where among other duties she coordinated the technical response to the H1N1 pandemic. Previously, she was the Chief of Health Planning Division at the Ministry of Health in Chile (2005-08) and Head of the Department of Epidemiology at the same institution (1999-05). She was the Chilean representative during the negotiations of IHR2005; official delegate for APEC-HWG, and for MERCOSUR SGT-11. She was also primarily responsible for the implementation of the IHR at the Ministry of Health of Chile. Dr Aguilera’s previous engagement with WHO includes consultancies and active participation as a WHO expert in several international meetings and forums on SARS, pandemic influenza preparedness, communicable diseases eradication and elimination, Universal Health Coverage measurement, and monitoring as well as the implementation of the IHR (2005). Recently participated in the Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations (2005) during the COVID-19 Response. She has worked as a consultant for UNDP, International Development Bank and the World Bank in several countries in Latin America and participated in the WHO mission to support the SARS outbreak response in China (2003).