Peter Waiswa MBChB, MPH, PhD

Dr. Peter Waiswa is an Associate Professor of Health Policy Planning and Management of the School of Public Health at Makerere University. He has trained in medicine (Mbarara University, Uganda), in Public Health (Hebrew University, Israel), and completed a PhD and Postdoc (joint Makerere University and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden). In 2020, Peter was appointed as one of 30 experts globally to advise the Director General of the WHO on Maternal and Child Health issues.

Peter is a leading African academic with over one hundred publications. He is also part of advocacy efforts especially to advance maternal, newborn and child health in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) era. These efforts have contributed to the UN’s Ending Preventable Maternal Death and Disability strategy and the Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) which are driving global policies with impact at scale up. He is co-lead of the EN-INDEPTH five countries study that is further validating how to measure these indicators in health systems in low and middle income countries. He was the Principle Investigator (PI) for the Saving Mothers Giving Life (SMGL) project in Uganda that achieved a 40% reduction in maternal deaths. This experience was adapted into the Uganda National Plan for maternal, newborn and child health reduction, and the same strategy is being used in Nigeria and other countries at scale.

Among other initiatives, he started the Makerere University Maternal Newborn and Child Health Centre of Excellence and the INDEPTH Network Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Research Group. Dr. Waiswa has participated regularly in advisory roles to WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, International Pediatric Association, East African Community, African Academy of Sciences, and more.