Kesetebirhan Admasu

Dr Kesetebirhan (Kesete) Admasu is a medical doctor and public health specialist who was the Minister of Health of Ethiopia between November 2012 and 2016. It was reported that he left the government after declining a new non-health cabinet ministerial portfolio during a cabinet reshuffle in November 2016. He was appointed as a Minister in October 2012 after serving as State Minister for Health Programs between October 2010 and October 2012. He is known for his critical role in implementing the health sector reform of the country when he served as Director General, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention between 2007 and 2010. Dr Kesete has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer of the Rollback Malaria Partnership in February 2017.

He was trained in the Gondar University College of Medical Sciences for both his Doctor of Medicine and Master of Public Health degrees.

Dr Kesete is a champion of innovation, task-shifting, and implementation at large scale. He has been a staunch advocate for maternal health and child health and led the national roll-out of a single rod contraceptive implant through the use of community health workers that resulted in 2 million women using the method. He also coordinated the national scale up of integrated community case management of childhood illnesses to improve access to life saving interventions. These efforts led to the reduction of child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 and help Ethiopia to achieve the Millennium Development Goals targets. He has led the implementation of the reformed family code that helped reduce clandestine abortion and its contribution to high maternal mortality and played a pivotal role in abolishing user fees and provision of free maternal services in all public health facilities. He was nominated by Melinda Gates for the 2016 Global 120 under 40 Leaders of Family Planning award

Minister Kesete is a globally recognized leader in the fight against neglected tropical diseases. He was the architect of the Addis Ababa commitment on NTDs, which has been endorsed by more than 26 countries. Under his leadership, Ethiopia has developed a national roadmap to end the scourge of NTDs by 2020. He is particularly known for the Ministerial Initiative he has launched to reduce the surgical backlog of patients with trachoma. The overarching aim of his initiative is to end blinding trachoma in Ethiopia by 2020. Through this ministerial initiative, in less than two years nearly 300,000 patients have already undergone TT surgery and averted avoidable blindness.

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