Marleen Temmerman

Marleen Temmerman, born on 24 March 1953 in Lokeren, is a Belgian gynaecologist, professor and former senator who works on the health and rights of women and children. She studied medicine at Ghent University, and an internship in Butare, Rwanda, in 1975 drew her toward reproductive health in low- and middle-income countries. Trained in obstetrics and gynaecology, tropical medicine and public health, she researched infertility and then sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, and lived in Kenya from 1986 to 1992. In 1992 she founded the International Centre for Reproductive Health at Ghent University, and she has been a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology there since 1995. Over three decades of clinical work she supervised more than 18,000 births. She served in the Belgian Senate from 2007 to 2012, then directed the World Health Organization Department of Reproductive Health and Research from 2012, and since December 2015 has worked at Aga Khan University in Nairobi, where she heads the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health.