Elevanie Nyankesha

Background

About Elevanie Nyankesha

Elevanie has over eighteen years of policy and program design, planning, management, research, monitoring, and evaluation experience in the field of public health. She has a rich experience in the HIV program, Maternal Newborn, Child, and Adolescent health (MNCAH) program as well as in the Nutrition program within the ministry of health and UNICEF at the country, regional, and headquarters levels. Elevanie is currently working as a health specialist within the Primary Health Care and Health System Strengthening (HSS) unit hosted within the health section in the UNICEF New York headquarters office where she works on implementation research and PHC/HSS measurement for improvement. She led the development of the integrated MNCAH and HIV concept note in 24 countries which contributed to leverage close to 300 million USD from Global Funds to accelerate the elimination of pediatric HIV infection in the region and improve the health system. Elevanie has skills and experience in nutrition programs at the country and UNICEF levels. and as program coordinator, she has developed the national guideline for infant and young children feeding in the context of HIV. Prior to UNICEF WCARO, Elevanie served as a PMTCT specialist in UNICEF Rwanda where she played a catalytic role and provided technical support to the Government of Rwanda to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV (EMTCT). Within UNICEF in two and a half years, Elévanie was able to mobilize an amount of $ 1, 2 million to address national EMTCT gaps. Before joining UNICEF, Elevanie managed for 9 years the Prevention of Mother to child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT) program and as national coordinator of Clinical HIV prevention interventions in Ministry of Health of Rwanda. Elevanie led the development of the National PMTCT program policy and guidelines in her own country. In 2004, she led the development of the national scale-up plan for PMTCT and HIV Testing and Counselling. The national scale-up plan was a cornerstone for the resource mobilization and program alignment among various donors and implementing partners in Rwanda. During her tenure, she was able to mobilize an estimated $ 100 million for HIV clinical prevention activities between 2003 and 2008. She has also experience in health response in Humanitarian settings from Guinea where she coordinated health response to Ebola outbreak, from Somalia where she coordinated the drought and related public health emergency, in Sudan where she coordinated cholera response in UNICEF. She served as an Emergency health care provider in ICRC.