Gaurang Tanna

Head, Policy Coordination and Integrated Planning at National Department of Health, South Africa

Gaurang is a passionate, astute, versatile and an influential public health professional with health informatics and analytical skills. The desire to make a social change, and passion for improving the quality of care though innovation has kept him occupied at the National Department of Health in South Africa (under the Ministry of Health) for the past 14 years.

Gaurang is a BSc (hons) Computer Science graduate, and has obtained a Masters degree in Public Health with specialization in Health Systems and Policy. He has extensive experience in the health sector on policy making and strategy formulation. He’s also had the opportunity to work strategic Health Information System projects. He has led the development and implementation of various planning frameworks for the health sector and extensively contributed to government wide planning frameworks implemented in South Africa, and very fond of driving collaboration and partnerships.

Gaurang has led the development and implementation of digital contact tracing systems (CovidConnect and CovidAlert) in South Africa. Both CovidConnect and CovidAlert have emerged out of public-private partnerships between the Department of Health of South Africa, and the private sector (private medical scheme (Discovery Heath), Mobile network operator (Telkom), public entities (National Health Laboratory Service) and non-governmental organisations (GovChat.org and Praekelt.org)). Commercial banks and Mobile Network Operators have also supported adoption of the CovidAlert App.