Anna Thomas

Area of Expertise:

• Health, Doctors, Nurses, HIV/AIDS, Nutrition
• Social, Gender, Education, Youth, Child

Professional Experience:

After working for several years in Clinical Paediatrics with some exposure to Internal Medicine and Obstetrics, I chose a career in public health. Following my master's degree from UCL, London, I worked as a lecturer in Community Medicine at a Medical College and then took up a position as Surveillance Medical Officer in WHO's polio project (NPSP); I resigned from this position in Oct. 2012 on account of pressing family reasons.

I have considerable knowledge and experience of child health issues in low resource settings; and a deep interest in developing low cost and low technology solutions to achieving sustainable outcomes in maternal and child health.

Through my work in WHO-NPSP, I gained field and programmatic experience besides advocacy skills with government health and administrative officials in low income settings with fragile health systems. The job entailed finding strategies to circumvent issues of poor accountability and corruption, while building on relationships with key (health) personnel, in order to achieve programmatic goals. The districts had populations in excess of 1 million, so the scale of activity was quite large.

I work hard and within time schedules. My strengths include good communication and presentation skills, the ability to work in teams and in different socio-cultural settings, maintain good interpersonal relationships with co-workers, adaptability, attention to detail, ability to improvise with limited resources, the empathy for sick children and their mothers.