WHO has announced that Professor Helen Rees, internationally-recognized expert in vaccination and one of South Africa’s most well known women scientists, has taken over as the Chair of WHO’s leading advisory group on immunization, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts, or SAGE.

Professor Rees is the founder and Executive Director of the Wits Institute for Sexual and reproductive Health, HIV and Related Diseases of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, where she is also an Ad Hominen Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She is co-chair of South Africa’s National AIDS Council’s Programme Implementing Committee and a member of the National Advisory Group on Immunizations. Professor Rees has a research interest in areas including HIV/AIDS prevention, HIV and human papillomavirus vaccines, and broader issues relating to women’s health.

For full story, see http://www.who.int/immunization/sage/news_sage_chair_2010/en/index.html
For biographies of current SAGE members, see http://www.who.int/immunization/sage/members/en/index.html