Hande Harmancı

A medical doctor and doctor of community medicine and public health, Hande Harmanci has worked as a professor of public health in Marmara University, Turkey prior to joining WHO in January 2005 for improving quality of education in health institutions and also leading the Health Leadership Services programme. She has joined the Global Influenza Program in June 2007 where she is currently responsible for leading the Information Management, Training and Pandemic Preparedness team. Under the H1N1 (2009) pandemic response structure of WHO, she has been appointed as the team leader for Societal and Individual Measures functional team. While in the university she taught undergraduate and postgraduate classes, tutored and guided postgraduate students with their dissertation theses and chaired various committees in the medical faculty. She also served as the Deputy Director of Health Services in a district of Istanbul in 1994-2002. Her responsibilities included coordinating the primary level health care services in health centers serving approximately 550,000 inhabitants for planning, coordinating and monitoring of immunization, disease surveillance and family planning services and in-service training of health personnel. She has also served as a consultant for WHO, UNICEF, Turkish Medical Association, the Institute for Higher Education, and the Ministry of Health of Turkey, and various sectors of the industry especially for technical capacity building and system setting activities.