Arshad Altaf

Dr Arshad Altaf is a physician and a public health practitioner trained in Pakistan and the United States. He is currently working as a Consultant and focal person for the injection safety in WHO headquarters in Geneva. Started in 2015, the global injection safety campaign of WHO is concentrating on three countries including India, Uganda and Egypt.

Dr Altaf has been closely working with the WHO country offices of these three countries and ministries of health and their hepatitis programmes providing technical assistance in implementation strategies. He has closely worked with the injection safety initiative of WHO since it started in early 2000s. The initial research work on development of injection safety tools was spearheaded by him.

He advocates for a multi prong strategy to improve injection safety as he believes that there is no quick fix to the problem. He is also concerned about the transmission risks of hepatitis C in particular due to unsafe medical injections in some of the high burden countries. Dr Altaf has multiple publications in peer reviewed journals on injection safety not only highlighting the problem but suggesting strategies to improve the problem.