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  • 27 April 2021 | Portugal

    AKDN Interview With Gijs Walraven, Akdn Director For Health

    In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension or heart disease receive treatments at the Aga Khan Dialysis Centre which are covered by national health schemes (Photo taken prior to COVID-19). AKDN / Lucas Cuervo Moura
  • 27 April 2021 | Portugal

    AKDN Interview With Gijs Walraven, Akdn Director For Health

    Construction of the COVID-19 Emergency Response Centre in Garamchashma, Pakistan. AKDN
  • 27 April 2021 | Portugal

    AKDN Interview With Gijs Walraven, Akdn Director For Health

    In Rasht, Tajikistan, AKDN agencies including the Aga Khan Health Services, the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat and the Aga Khan Foundation have continued to work for their communities during the pandemic, as they have since 2002. AKF Canada
  • 27 April 2021 | Portugal

    AKDN Interview With Gijs Walraven, Akdn Director For Health

    The Aga Khan University’s campuses in Karachi and Nairobi participated in global clinical trials to assess the effectiveness of two potential vaccines for COVID-19. AKU / Umaima Mughal
  • 27 April 2021 | Portugal

    AKDN Interview With Gijs Walraven, Akdn Director For Health

    Gaudencia is a community health worker in Tanzania who took part in AKDN-supported COVID-19 response training. She goes door-to-door in her community to educate her neighbours about the importance of washing their hands and wearing a mask. AKF Canada
  • 27 April 2021 | Portugal

    AKDN Interview With Gijs Walraven, Akdn Director For Health

    To ensure quality diagnosis and treatment, doctors at Mariakani Subcounty Hospital in Kilifi County have eHealth consultations regularly with specialists at the Aga Khan Hospital Mombasa, Kenya (Photo taken prior to COVID-19). AKDN / Lucas Cuervo Moura
  • 27 April 2021 | Portugal

    AKDN Interview With Gijs Walraven, Akdn Director For Health

    The state-of-the-art 141-bed facility places particular emphasis on the needs of women and children, and represents a new chapter for the Bamyan Provincial Hospital in Afghanistan (Photo taken prior to COVID-19). AKDN / Kiana Hayeri
  • 27 April 2021 | Portugal

    AKDN Interview With Gijs Walraven, Akdn Director For Health

    The 400-KW solar plant of the Bamyan Provincial Hospital in Afghanistan provides for the majority of the electricity supply for the Hospital. AKDN / Sameer Dossa

Dr Gijs Walraven joined the Aga Khan Development Network in 2003, where he is now the Aga Khan Development Network Director for Health and General Manager of the Aga Khan Health Services (AKHS). He is also Honorary Professor in Community Health Sciences at the Aga Khan University. 

For 15 years, he worked in Africa in healthcare provision, management and research, with a major emphasis on district health systems. Dr Walraven has published widely in international peer-reviewed journals. He is also the author of Health and Poverty: Global health problems and solutions (Routledge, London), which received first prize in the category “health and social care” in the 2011 British Medical Association Annual Book Awards. 

Dr Walraven has been on several occasions technical advisor to the World Health Organization, and he co-chaired the global expert committee on recommendations for optimising health workers’ roles to improve access to key maternal and new-born health through task shifting. He is the co-chair of the AKDN COVID-19 Global Task Force (GTF), and a member of its governance Steering Committee. 


Non-communicable diseases were ascendant in Central and South Asia, the Middle East and East Africa, where AKHS  works.  Then COVID-19 happened.  How has the pandemic changed perceptions of the health burden in developing countries?

Because COVID-19 is an infectious disease, people often think that our focus on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has become less intense.  But the contrary is true. In fact, underlying conditions brought on by NCDs have led to a rise in the death toll from COVID-19. The majority of those who have died from COVID-19 had an underlying NCD , such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic lung disease or cancer. Nearly three-quarters of all deaths around the world are caused by NCDs, so the urgency of the problem was only further highlighted by COVID-19.

In fact, at the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director-General, has said that “the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the full danger of noncommunicable diseases – and signalled the urgent need for stronger public health policies and investment to prevent them”. In the work of AKHS, and as part of the COVID-19 response, we have increased our health promotion and disease prevention activities to address risk factors for NCDs, as well as augmented our efforts to diagnose and treat disease early.

Read the full interview on: https://www.akdn.org/our-stories/akdn-interview-gijs-walraven-akdn-direc...