Aya Yajima

Aya Yajima is a public health specialist and the Regional Advisor on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) in the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office. She coordinates with WHO Headquarters, Country Offices, donors and partners to provide technical support for Member States in the Region for accelerating control and elimination of NTDs. 

Formerly she was a Regional NTD Technical Lead in WHO Western Pacific Regional Office (2015-2021) and a Technical Officer at the Department of Control of NTD (2009-2015) , WHO Headquarters where she supported development of various technical guidelines and tools to facilitate and monitor implementation of preventive chemotherapy interventions. She has led validation of elimination of lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem in 12 countries, elimination of trachoma as a public health problem in 4 countries and achievement of criteria for elimination of schistosomiasis as a public health problem in 3 countries and that of visceral leishmaniasis in one country across two WHO Regions.  

She is a graduate of the University of London (Queen Mary), and earned MSc (environmental health) from Asian Institute of Technology, MPH from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and PhD from the University of Tokyo on transmission control of neglected parasitic zoonoses in Viet Nam.