Suraya Dalil

Suraya Dalil was born in Kabul in February 1970. She graduated from Zarghona High School of Kabul in 1985 and studied medicine at Kabul Medical University from 1986 to 1991, graduating with highest honors and top in her classIn 2004, Dr. Dalil was awarded a Presidential Scholarship from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts. She returned to Afghanistan with a Master’s Degree in Health Care Management in 2005. Her experiences include working with the Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) where she participated in provision of health care to thousands of Tajik refugees who had fled fighting in Tajikistan and sought refuge in northern Afghanistan. - winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan from 1992 to 1993 Her next assignment was with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in 1993-94 where she focused on medical assistance to Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran. In 1994, Dr. Dalil joined UNICEF Afghanistan and continued her career with UNICEF focusing on maternal and child health until end of 2009. Her work in Mazar-i-Sharif, Islamabad and Kabul with UNICEF Afghanistan enabled her to contribute to her country’s health care and overall wellbeing at a time that the country faced a very difficult political and socio-economic time. In 2002-03, she participated in the Afghanistan Maternal Mortality Study that was carried out by the Ministry of Public Health, Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF - one of the most important public health studies in Afghanistan’s recent history that has greatly influenced policy decisions on maternal health for many years. In the mid-2007 she was assigned as the Chief of Health and Nutrition Program of UNICEF Somalia taking her experiences and commitment to east Africa. She worked for Somalia until December 2009 where she led a large scale nutrition, immunization and communicable disease control program. In January 2010 she was assigned by the President of Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as the Acting Minister of Public Health and from March 2012 to December 2014 she was the Minister of Public Health. Her mother tongue is Uzbeki, she can speak Dari, Pashtu and English. She is mother of three children.