Meet Four Women Who Are Transforming Global Health

By Jennifer Lotito

On April 5, 2023

While Women’s History Month has come and gone, every day, women are changing the trajectory of global health in communities around the world. Some of these trailblazers are household names–but even more are unknown, unpaid, and utterly indispensable.

Women bring a unique combination of experience, exposure, and perspective to health care. From advocates to activists to implementers, here are just a few women I admire for their leadership and the indelible mark they’re making on global health today.

Winnie Byanyima – The Good Troublemaker

Ever since Winnie Byanyima became the first female Ugandan aeronautical engineer, her career has only skyrocketed.

Among other things, Byanyima has served as an ambassador, a member of parliament, a non-profit leader, and now, the executive director of UNAIDS. No matter the title, Byanyima has been a tireless toiler in making good trouble on behalf of women and girls. She led the creation of the African Union Commission’s Directorate of Gender and Development and has spurred efforts to combat climate change, increase women’s access to healthcare, and end unpaid work.

“All my life I’ve been a social justice activist, whether this was the women’s rights movement, where I’ve been a leader from the grassroots up to the global level, or fighting against corruption and the rights of community in my country as a parliamentarian,” Byanyima told Science in 2019.

I’ve seen Winnie speak many times, and one of the many qualities that make her such a powerful leader is that she fearlessly follows her convictions even when they lead her to challenging conversations. There was the time she stared down a room full of wealthy executives in Davos and told them we must end tax havens which often deprive developing countries of revenue that could be used to support health care and other social programs. Or the time she passionately advocated for vaccine patent waivers on a panel with leaders aligned with the pharmaceutical industry.

Byanyima was given seven names at birth, including Kyegiragire, which means “I can make myself whatever I want to be.” What she has done is make herself into an unstoppable force, serving as a model for other women to lead with confidence and passion, working tirelessly to ensure the world around her reflects the equity and opportunity she stands for.

Nema Makyao – The Empowerer

Preventing mother to child transmission of HIV is a critical part of ending the global threat of AIDS. As a technical advisor with Amref Health Africa, Nema Makyao has seen this issue firsthand.

Tanzania has experienced great success enrolling women in mother-to-child prevention programs over the last decade, but they have struggled with retention. In 2019, Tanzania had a mother-to-child infection rate of 11 percent, more than twice the global target, according to UNICEF.

Frustrated by the persistence of a preventable disease, Makyao and her colleagues set to work on solving the problem by looking no further than their own communities. The solution was Mentor Mothers, a community-based program that recruits and trains HIV-positive mothers as peer educators and role models for other women, encouraging them to fight stigma, stay on treatment and live a full and positive life.

These social groups have not only helped increase treatment retention rates, they’ve also provided a life-saving form of psycho-social support for HIV-positive women. “They have been able to increase their confidence because they supported each other psychologically, but also they were able to disclose their HIV status as well,” Makyao told me on a recent trip to Tanzania.

Like many great leaders, Makyao understands the importance of forging human connections with the people her organization serves. She frequently travels to see the effectiveness of Amref’s programs in action, meeting with underserved women, including those in the sex industry, and encouraging them to utilize existing community health services. “The breakthrough for HIV and in the epidemic is to ensure community involvement and the use of the Mentor Mothers model,” she said. “That is going to be the solution.”

Chelsea Clinton – The Advocate

Covid has had a crippling impact on both lives and livelihoods around the world. But it’s also presented us with an opportunity to rebuild and create stronger, more inclusive health systems that address the underserved needs of women and girls globally.

Few recognize the urgency of this moment better than former first daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who serves as the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. “The global health crisis we have been facing can be turned into a historical opportunity to construct an equitable global health and human rights architecture that advances health security and justice,” Clinton and global health advocates wrote in The Lancet last year.

Whether she’s working to combat childhood obesity, vaccine hesitancy, or championing early brain and language development, Clinton puts equity and equality for women and girls at the forefront of every conversation. Last fall, I got a firsthand look at Clinton the advocate as she helped the Global Fund raise over $15 billion, the largest global commitment to fight preventable disease.

Growing up in the public eye, Clinton could have used her platform to do just about anything. She chose to follow her passion for global health and has made herself a compassionate and authoritative voice for the wellbeing of women and girls everywhere.

Doreen Shempela – The Trailblazer

When Doreen Shempela first joined the Churches Health Association of Zambia (CHAZ), the country’s largest non-government health provider, Zambia had just three polymerase chain reaction (PCR) labs, a critical element in providing timely diagnoses. Today, that number has grown to roughly 70, Shempela recounted to (RED) on a recent visit to her lab.

“Years ago, when you’re an HIV-positive mother and you have a baby who was exposed, you go to the lab for testing. The results would come when the baby is walking,” Shempela said. Today, lab results are known within hours and patients who are HIV-positive are sent home with life-saving antiretroviral treatment.

Shempela is a trailblazer in global health, pushing for lab strengthening and educating her colleagues, including her boss, on the role new technologies play in staying ahead of future pandemics. “Sometimes we tend to think that you can only learn from people who are above you in the hierarchy, but we can also learn from people who you are supervising because no one knows everything,” said Karen Sichinga, the Head of CHAZ, reflecting on her early days at the organization. “I’m not a lab specialist. Doreen was a lab specialist, and I needed to learn from her what this means.”

Over her nearly two decades in global health, Shempela has modeled the way and encouraged other women to follow in her footsteps by creating opportunities for them to pursue careers in science and technology at CHAZ. “Women are now encouraged to go into science. They are encouraged to go into medicine. They are encouraged to go into technology. They are encouraged to do what was considered a men’s field,” Shempela said. “I think the future is bright for women. The future is female, and the women are not remaining behind.”

Carrying The Torch

I’m enormously grateful for these leaders, and so many others, who, despite all obstacles, show up each and every day to carry the torch towards a more inclusive and equitable world.

A recent study from the World Economic Forum found that it will take the world an astounding–and unacceptable–132 years to reach gender parity. We need more women–and men–to step up and speak out to close the gender gap–especially around women’s access to healthcare.

As the saying goes: None of us are equal until all of us are equal.

This piece was republished from Forbes.