Lekha Puri has several years of work experience in low- and middle-income countries and at the global level bringing expertise in health financing, health economics and health system strengthening. She is particularly interested in public-private-community initiatives focused on increasing access to essential health commodities.
As a program officer with R4D’s market-shaping practice, Ms. Puri provides technical and programmatic support to the practice’s flagship project to increase access to childhood pneumonia treatment in high-burden countries. She also supports the Maternal, Child, and Neonatal Health (MNCH) project to improve access to life-saving MNCH health products in sub-Saharan Africa.
Before joining R4D, Ms. Puri worked with The Stop TB Partnership in Geneva, Switzerland, supporting the implementation of a social sector venture capital fund within the UN to drive innovations in tuberculosis diagnostics and care with the goal of bringing innovations to the people who need it the most. Prior to The Stop TB Partnership, she worked with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) based in Lao PDR, supporting Lao PDR, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar governments on financial management of donor funds and strategic planning to achieve their malaria elimination goals by 2020.
Ms. Puri applied a similar analytical skillset while working on health economics projects focused on costing TB and malaria treatment programs in India, Malawi, Vietnam, Peru, and the Philippines while working as a research assistant at the McGill International TB Centre and with additional NGOs such as the Foundation for Innovative and New Diagnostics.
Ms. Puri holds an MSc in public health, focused on health economics, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BSc in chemistry from McGill University.
