2015 Honorary Award Recipient: Dr. Mickey Chopra

For the last six years Dr. Mickey Chopra has been the Chief of Health and Associate Director of Programs at UNICEF’s New York Headquarters, leading the agency’s work on maternal, newborn and child health, immunization, pediatric HIV/AIDS, and health systems strengthening, policy and research.

While Chief of Health at UNICEF, Dr Chopra led this UN agency’s efforts toward remarkable progress in improving child health, to reduce childhood and maternal mortally working to achieve Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5, increasing funding for children’s health programs, and seeing through a renewed focus on child health through the UN Secretary General’s Every Woman, Every Child Initiative. He ushered UNICEF’s efforts toward polio elimination in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

In March 2014, India was declared polio-free.

And in July 2015, Nigeria achieved the milestone of one year without a case of polio. Deaths due to malaria have dropped significantly with rates having been halved in many parts of Africa. In large part due to UNICEF’s efforts to drive vaccination and vitamin A campaigns, measles deaths have dropped by nearly 70%.

And always a champion for health equity especially among women and children, Dr Chopra led UNICEF efforts along with the World Health Organization to design and launch a road map for strategies against the two major killers of children, the Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhea (GAPPD).

He led the technical team that oversaw the UN Commission on Essential Medicines and Commodities that has resulted in over $250 million being raised to address the bottlenecks that prevent cheap and life saving commodities from reaching the poorest families.

Over the past 6 years, Dr Chopra has guided UNICEF toward improving investments in global health, reducing health inequities, increasing focus on women and children’s health, eliminating major infectious diseases, and strengthening UNICEFs place in the global health community.

In addition he has chaired the Evaluation and Research Group at the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria to ensure that their investments are reaching those most in need and chaired the Special Committee for Large Countries for GAVI that worked on ensuring increased coverage of vaccines for Nigeria and India in particular.

Prior to his appointment to UNICEF, Dr. Chopra was the director of the Health Systems Research Group of the South Africa Medical Research Council and a faculty member of the University of the Western Cape. In this capacity he worked with local leaders and communities to establish innovative programs combating HIV/AIDS and malnutrition. He started his career working for six years as one of five medical officers in a deep rural hospital in KwaZulu doing everything from outpatient clinics to abdominal surgery.

Dr. Chopra has published over 170 international peer-reviewed papers and contributed to numerous book chapters concerned with international child health and nutrition.

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