The Man Behind First Vita Plus

Dr. Jaime Galvez Z. Tan is a former Secretary of the Department of Health.(DOH) He served as Undersecretary and Chief of Staff of the Department of Health from 1992 to 1994. Prior to that time, he held senior positions at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), both at the national and the regional levels. Earlier, Dr. Galvez Tan served as a rural health physician and trainer. He has been a consultant for UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), The World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and has been a Bill Gates Fellow since 2002. Dr. Galvez Tan is widely published and has lectured in fifteen countries on different continents. The recipient of numerous awards, he is currently an International Consultant on Health Policy Development, Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of the Philippines Manila and Executive Director of the National Institute of Health. In 2003, he was unanimously elected as the Chair of the Global alliance for the elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis (GAELF) in a meeting held in Liverpool, United Kingdom. In 2002, he was a Resource person of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) for its various courses on health management. He also heads the Health Futures Foundation, Inc., a non-stock, non-profit, non-governmental organization, which assists communities, NGOs and local governments in health care management.

Dr. Galvez Tan has the rare combination of the following expertise : solid grassroots community work in far flung doctor-less rural areas, national and international health planning and programming, experience as faculty of colleges of medicine and health sciences, clinical practice combining North American-European medicine and Asian and Filipino traditional medicine; national health policy development, national health field operations management, management of national health promotion campaigns, essential national health research, reproductive health and family planning and private sector health business operations. He has worked with non-government organizations, the academe, international development agencies and with the Philippine government.