Dr. Mukesh Chawla

Health, Nutrition & Population, World Bank

Mukesh Chawla, PhD, Adviser, Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank, has worked for over twenty-five years with governments and international development partners in Europe, Asia and Africa on a variety of health sector issues, including design and diffusion of complex innovations in health, identification of innovative business solutions to address systemic and process issues in the health sector, and economics of health. He led the development of the Pandemic Emergency Financing (PEF) facility, which provided surge funds to low-income countries for early response to major disease outbreaks through a unique pandemic insurance mechanism and managed its operations until the facility closed in April 2021. His current area of interest and responsibility is helping countries get better prepared to respond immediately and effectively to disease outbreaks that have the potential of assuming pandemic proportions. He has written extensively on the role of markets and market-like institutions in the creation of incentives that strengthen health systems, fiscal space for health, innovations in health financing, design of health sector reforms and economics of aging populations. Prior to joining the Bank, he held a research faculty position at Harvard University, Boston, USA. Before that, as member of the Indian Administrative Service in India, he held several key government positions between 1980 and 1998. He attended St. Stephen’s College and Delhi School of Economics, Delhi, India, and Boston University, Boston, USA.