Ximena Aguilera Sanhueza

The current Minister of Health, Ximena Aguilera Sanhueza, is a Surgeon and Specialist in Public Health from the University of Chile. 

The authority was recently recognized internationally by The Lancet journal for its contribution to managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile and the world. She is also member of the National Pandemic Response Commission (CNRP) of the Chilean Ministry of Health.  

She was Director of the Center of Epidemiology and Health Policies at the Faculty of Medicine Clínica Alemana Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile. 

She has served as Senior Advisor for Communicable Diseases of the Pan American Health Organization, based in Washington DC (2008-2010); She was Head of the Health Planning Division of the Ministry of Health in Chile (2005-2008) and national Head of Epidemiology of the same ministry (1999-2005). She has also worked as a consultant for different international organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Bank, carrying out activities in various Latin American countries and China.

Among her most notable activities are: the reformulation of the national surveillance system in Chile; the implementation of the population health survey system in the Chilean Ministry of Health (Quality of Life Survey and National Health Survey, among others); having led the process of formulation and evaluation of the Health Objectives for the Decade 2000-2010 and her participation in the process of Reform of the Health Sector in Chile (2005), specifically in the strengthening of the health authority and in the conceptual design and definition of the legal mechanisms for the prioritization of diseases to be included in the Explicit Guarantees System (AUGE, currently GES). She also coordinated and led the studies for the definition of national health priorities (burden of disease, cost-effectiveness and verification of the expected cost of the AUGE package).

She officially represented the Ministry of Health of Chile in the negotiation of the International Health Regulations (IHR), in the APEC health working group and participated in the team of epidemiologists of the Mission to China of the World Health Organization for the control of the SARS outbreak (2003).

She was primarily responsible for Chile's preparation for the avian influenza pandemic. During her tenure at the Pan American Health Organization, she was responsible for leading and coordinating the organization's technical response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic.

 Her research interests are related to epidemiology applied to health policies and the evaluation of health services with an emphasis on inequalities and global health related to communicable diseases of poverty and the alert and response to epidemic outbreaks.