Keizo TAKEMI

Keizo Takemi is Senior Fellow of Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE). He has also been serving as Chair of JCIE’s Executive Committee on Global Health and Human Security—a public-private global health policy platform founded in 2007—and of the Asian Population and Development Association. He previously served as Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare from September 2023 to September 2024 and served five terms as a Liberal Democratic Party member of the House of Councillors.

He has been involved in various global initiatives including the UN Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health, Global Health Workforce Alliance, WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing, and the international organizing committee of the Prince Mahidol Award Conference (PMAC). In 2016, he was appointed to the UN High Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, and in 2018, to the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Financing Advisory Committee for the G20 2019.

He served as Senior Vice Minister for Health, Labour and Welfare, and State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, where he led the initiative to establish the UN Trust Fund for Human Security. In recognition of his contributions to the field over the past decade, he was appointed WHO Goodwill Ambassador for UHC from 2019 to 2022, and was named to the advisory board of the International Committee of the Red Cross in July 2025. From October 2025, he has also served as Visiting Professor at Nagasaki University, is the co-author of Global Action for Health System Strengthening: Policy Recommendations to the G8 (2009), and has written numerous articles in English.