The Saudi Cabinet has approved the extended secondment of Dr. Hanan Balkhy as assistant director general for antimicrobial resistance at the World Health Organization.

Prior to her WHO assignment in 2019, she served as chairwoman of King Abdullah International Medical Research Center’s infectious diseases department at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences from 2012 to 2019.

She received a research award from KSAU-HS for her leading role in studies related to infectious diseases and public health, and between 2008 and 2009 acted as adviser associate editor for the university’s official infection and public health journal.

For 18 years she held the position of executive director for infection prevention and control at the Saudi Ministry of National Guard and was also director of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s center for infection control.

Balkhy is an associate professor at KSAU-HS, with more than 90 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Over the past 16 years, she has helped organize numerous national and international educational symposia and seminars in the field of infection control, including for the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and the International Conference on Prevention and Infection Control.

In addition, she sits on several WHO committees including its advisory group on integrated surveillance and antimicrobial resistance, the strategic and technical advisory group on antimicrobial resistance, and the international health regulations review committee.

She has also been a member of the ESCMID’s scientific affairs subcommittee, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America’s externals affairs subcommittee, and was recently elected to the SHEA board of trustees as international councilor.

Balkhy graduated from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Between 1993 and 1996, she completed her pediatric residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and from 1996 to 1999 took part in a pediatric infectious diseases fellowship program through the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Case Western Reserve University, in Ohio.