Having dedicated 40 years of her life to civil service at the Ministry of Health, Nafsiah Mboi is a leader in the fight against AIDS. Since AIDS and the HIV virus appeared in Indonesia, she has been working both on policy development in the political sphere, and on the ground with affected communities through her own private practice.

Mboi was trained in paediatric health as a graduate from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia in 1971. She went on to study in Europe and America, eventually earning a degree at the Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium and becoming a research fellow at Harvard University, USA.

From 1999-2002, Mboi served as the Director of the World Health Organization’s Department of Gender and Women’s Health in Geneva, Switzerland. She went on to be Minister of Health of Indonesia from 2012-2014, as well as Board Chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria from 2013-2015.

Recently, Mboi was awarded the Kompas 2021 Dedicated Scholar for her efforts in AIDS awareness. In 2015, she was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the National AIDS Commission.