Zsuzsanna Jakab was appointed Director of European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in March 2005. Before joining the EU, she was Secretary of State in Hungarys Ministry of Health. As the most senior civil servant at the ministry she has been responsible for overseeing Hungarys implementation of the EU policies and laws in her area, administering the spending of EU financial assistance, and managing Hungarys national public health programme. Mrs. Jakab also played a key role in the negotiations leading up to the European Conference on Health and the Environment, held in Budapest in July 2004. Before joining the Hungarian government, she worked in WHO Regional Office for Europe in Denmark for 11 years. In October 2000, Mrs. Jakab was appointed Director of Administration and Management Support in WHO Europe being responsible for the work of the governing bodies of the overall strategic and operational planning, monitoring and evaluation; supervising the work of the WHO Collaborating Centres in Europe; legal matters and administration. In the time between 2002 - 1991, she held several posts including Co-ordinator, Division of Information, Evidence and Communication; Director, Country Health Development; Acting Director, Country Health Development; Co-ordinator, Policy and Country Programme, EUROHEALTH Programme. Born in 1951 in Hungary, Mrs. Jakab holds a Master’s Degree from Eötvös Lóránd University of Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Budapest, a Postgraduate university degree from the University of Political Sciences, Budapest, a diploma of the two foundation courses in public health at the Nordic School of Public Health, Gothenburg, Sweden (Public Health Sciences and Qualitative Methods/ Public Health Science and Epidemiology) and a postgraduate diploma from the National Institute of Public Administration and Management. In September 2009 Zsuzsanna Jakab was nominated to be the WHO’s next Regional Director for Europe.  She is due to take up this post in February 2010 at the Regional Office for Europe in Copenhagen.