Preeti Sudan is a retired Indian bureaucrat who served as Health Secretary of India from October 2017 to July 2020. [1] She has been the key strategist in times of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sudan has degrees in Economics and Social Policy and Planning from the London School of Economics. She has been trained in public finance management in Washington.
A 1983 batch IAS officer of the Andhra cadre, Sudan was previously a Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution. [2] [3] Apart from this, she has served at various central and state level positions such as a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Defense as well as in position relating to disaster management [4] and tourism. [5] [6] She has been a key functionary in the planning and implementation of the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a scheme of the Indian government's National Health Policy aiming to provide free health coverage at the secondary and tertiary level to India's bottom 40% poor and vulnerable population. She has also served as consultant in the World Bank. [7]
Since 2020, Sudan has been serving as a member of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR), an independent group examining how the World Health Organization (WHO) and countries handled the COVID-19 pandemic, co-chaired by Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. [8]