Mohamad Jawad Khalifeh

Mohamed Jawad Khalife (born November 7, 1961) is a Lebanese surgeon. He was minister of Public Health of Lebanon from 2004 to 2010.

Khalife with a patient in 1998

Biography

Mohamed Jawad Khalife was born on November 7, 1961, in Sarafand, Lebanon.^{[citation needed]}

He was the son of Jawad Khalife, former mayor of Sarafand.^[1]

After obtaining his medical qualifications (MD) from the University of Bucharest-Romania in 1985, He trained in surgery and obtained his specialty degree in general surgery from the American University of Beirut-Lebanon in 1991. He completed his fellowships in surgery between 1990-1998 in London hospitals (Watford, St. Thomas, King’s College, Royal Free Hospital) with special interest in vascular, cancer and liver transplantation surgery.^{[citation needed]}

Back to Lebanon in 1991, he chaired the division of General Surgery and was appointed as the Director of the Liver Transplant and Hepato-Pancreatico-Biliary Unit at the American University of Beirut Medical Center where he performed the first liver transplantation surgery in the region and pioneered many other major surgical techniques.^[2]

In the period between 2004-2010, Professor Khalifeh was named in five successive governments as the minister of Public Health of Lebanon. In addition to his public duties, Professor Khalifeh kept practicing surgeries at AUB-Medical Center, teaching students, training residents and producing research. Under his terms as Minister of Health, Lebanon launched a network of accredited primary health care centers in addition to opening over 20 public hospitals in the country, a new registry for quality and pricing of pharmaceuticals in Lebanon was created, a health reform plan that guarantees a mandatory public national health insurance system to every citizen was instituted, and the official National Cancer Registry (NCR) in Lebanon was launched.^[3]

Awards

Mohamad Jawad Khalife (center)

• 2004: Officer of the National Order of the Cedar
• 2009: Commander of the National Order of the Cedar
• Honorary fellowships of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons in England^[4]
• 2021: Order of the Rockel (effectively making him Grand Commander of the order of the Republic of Sierra Leone)^[5][6]