Dr Anban Pillay is the Deputy Director General responsible for Health Regulation and Compliance at the National Department of Health in South Africa. He has served in various roles at the National Department of Health over the past 20 years. These include development of pharmaceutical policies on medicine registration, treatment guidelines, medicine formularies, procurement and service delivery strategies. He has also been instrumental in the developmental of the Universal Health Coverage (National Health Insurance) policy and legislative development in South Africa.
He has also served on a number of Global Bodies including the World Health Organization (Co-Chair Essential Medicines Committee, Advisory Committee on Medicine Pricing), Medicines Patent Pool (Board member), Global Fund (Market Dynamics Advisory group), UNICEF (Procurement advisory group) and Health Action International (Advisory Committee).
He played a central role in South Africa’s COVID response – particularly in the initial period when very little was known about the virus and its spread, disease presentation, health system readiness or availability of vaccines, PPE etc. He also co-chaired the ACT Accelerator which was a WHO mechanism to foster collaboration and accelerate development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
Dr Anban Pillay holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy (University of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa), Masters in Clinical Pharmacology (Nelson Mandela School of Medicine, South Africa) and PhD (University of Newcastle, Australia). He is extensively published in peer reviewed journals and book chapters.
