Dr Mai AlKaila

Minister of Health at Ministry of Health, Palestinian National Authority

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Dr Alkaila is a medical doctor with a PhD degree in public health management. She speaks fluent Arabic, English, Spanish and Italian. She has thirteen years of experience in the management of public health and community health programs, and substantial field experience in developing comprehensive primary health care programs in various Arab countries, southeast Asia, Latin America and the Arab Region, especially the occupied Palestinian territory.

She has worked as a resident physician in various hospitals in the occupied Palestinian territory, and in Saudi Arabia as a resident physician in obstetrics and gynaecology. She worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for several years, during which time she was the project manager for the reproductive health and family planning programme. She then took a post as a lecturer at the School of Public Health at Al-Quds University in the occupied Palestinian territory. Then she went back to UNRWA as the director of the family planning health program.

In 2007, she became the Permanent Ambassador of Palestine in Chile, and the non-resident Ambassador of Palestine in Bolivia and Paraguay from 2007 till 2013. In 2013, she became the Ambassador of Palestine in Italy, and an Observer Representative in FAO, the WFO and IFAD.

Recently, she became the Palestinian Minister of Health in April 2019, and she has just begun to tackle the main issues at work. That is, this fellowship has come at a very good moment, where she can discuss the main issues and impediments to improving health policy in Palestine with experts, and learn from various contexts and settings, and at the same time share with them the Palestinian experience.