WHO IS PROF. ROMA CHILENGI, ZAMBIA’S NEW MINISTER OF HEALTH?
WHO IS PROF. ROMA CHILENGI, ZAMBIA’S NEW MINISTER OF HEALTH? 🇿🇲🇿🇲
                 By Prof. Mutti
President Hakainde Hichilema has today appointed Prof. Roma Chilengi as Zambia’s new Minister of Health, bringing to Cabinet a man whose career has largely been built around medicine, epidemiology, vaccinology, clinical research and public health.
Prof. Chilengi is a medical doctor, epidemiologist, vaccinologist and academic. He studied Human Biology and Medicine at the University of Zambia, before pursuing postgraduate training in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
He also undertook specialised clinical-research training through the WHO/GSK programme.
His career has taken him beyond Zambia. He worked on clinical research in Zambia, malaria vaccine development in Tanzania and clinical trials through the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust/University of Oxford programme in Kenya.
After several years abroad, he returned to Zambia in 2011 and joined the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ).
At CIDRZ, he rose to become Chief Scientific Officer, overseeing major research programmes and establishing the organisation’s Enteric Disease and Vaccine Research platform.
He was also involved in research that supported the introduction of rotavirus vaccination in Zambia, an important intervention against severe childhood diarrhoeal disease.
His career has also been strongly academic. He has held teaching and research appointments, including an honorary lectureship at the University of Zambia and an adjunct academic position in the United States.
His professional profile records more than 190 peer-reviewed publications and extensive experience supervising postgraduate researchers.
Perhaps most importantly for his new position, Prof. Chilengi has been at the centre of Zambia’s public-health preparedness and response architecture.
He served as Director-General of the Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI) and was also associated with the Presidency as Special Assistant to the President on Health. His work has included disease surveillance, outbreak preparedness, vaccines, health security and strengthening Zambia’s scientific capacity.
He was also instrumental in advancing Zambia’s ambitions around vaccine security and local vaccine manufacturing. In 2025, under his leadership at ZNPHI, Zambia signed an agreement with the International Vaccine Institute aimed at strengthening the country’s vaccine and therapeutic innovation ecosystem.
What makes Prof. Chilengi’s appointment particularly the best and strategic for me, is that he is not coming into the Ministry primarily as a politician. He is coming in as a renowned Technocrat with a long career in science, medicine and public-health management.
Congratulations Prof. Roma Chilengi. You have the support from the citizens of this great Nation to deliver and transform using your enormous experience, the Mimistry of health, that has been problematic for years.
While you are there, kindly make sure you clean about the corruption in that Ministry. It has Killed alot of our peope.