Sujatha Rao

Kanuru Sujatha Rao joined National AIDS Control Organization as Additional Secretary and Director General on 21 November 2005. She joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1974. She has had the unique privilege of being associated with the health sector directly and indirectly since 1988 when she was deputed to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India as Director (Media). Since then she worked as Joint Secretary (IH), Policy etc., till 1993, and again from 1998-2003. In 2004 she was appointed as Secretary of the National Commission on Macroeconomics and Health which was co-chaired by the Union Ministers’ of Finance and Health. The report of this Commission is now the basis for much of the health sector reform underway in the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.

Sujatha was a Takemi Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health during 2001-2002 and has published several papers and articles on health and public policy matters. She was a co-author of ‘India Health Report’ published by Oxford University Press in 2003. She was also a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Global Health and Research, St Michaels Hospital, Canada.

She was nominated as Vice-Chairman of the Global Advisory Group on Nursing and Midwifery by the WHO as a public health expert for 2000-2001.

Sujatha did her post-graduation from Delhi University and obtained her Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University, USA.