WHO in Yemen
WHO Representative
Dr Arturo Pesigan, a national of the Philippines, assumed his role as World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in Yemen in April 2023. He has extensive managerial, technical and leadership experience based on many years in senior level roles at WHO. Dr Pesigan’s most recent post was as WHO Deputy Representative in the Indonesia Country Office where he served for 3 years.
Previously, Dr Pesigan was the Programme Area Manager of the Health Emergencies Programme of the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia in New Delhi. He was the Technical Officer at WHO Sri Lanka Office and Team Lead of the Urban Health Emergency Management Programme of WHO Kobe Centre for Health and Development. He has served at the 3 levels of the Organization – WHO headquarters, Regional Offices for South-East Asia and the Western Pacific), and country offices (Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste).
Dr Pesigan has extensive experience in health emergency management, community medicine, public health, international and global health and human resource development. He also served as Executive Director of the Community Medicine Development Foundation of the Philippines.
Dr Pesigan has held professional academic leadership roles as a Public Health Professor, Dean, and Vice Chancellor at the largest health sciences educational institution in his country — the University of the Philippines. Dr Pesigan holds a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Zoology, with honours, and a Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the University of the Philippines. He completed community medicine and public health post-graduate training at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. He also spent a year of his pre-med as a Rotary Fellow at The Johns Hopkins University. He is married and the father of 3 daughters.