Akhona Tshangela
Director, WomenLift Health
Ms. Akhona Tshangela is a public health professional with over 15 years of service. She has successfully implemented and lead programs at both national and continental level, demonstrating exceptional expertise in dealing with complex public health issues and contextualizing these to the African continent.
She was one of the pioneer staff for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, under the African Union, and has supported in the strengthening of Africa’s health systems through leading programs such as regional health product manufacturing and ensuring during the joint African COVID-19 response that decision making was informed by the available science and data at the time by co-chairing the science, regulations and standards technical working group. She has worked closely with several international and local partners including the private sector in shaping policy and garnering political and financial support at the highest decision-making levels.
She is a trained field epidemiologist and has supported a number of outbreak responses across the continent having obtained her master’s in public health from the University of Pretoria and her Bachelors of Science in Medicine (Honours) degree in Human Genetics at the University of Cape Town.