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The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a community of innovators from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Search current members and alumni by year awarded, sector or region.

Izkia Siches

Izkia Siches Pastén, MD, is a graduate of the Universidad de Chile Medical School and trained in internal medicine at the same university. She works in the Infectious Diseases Unit of the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago de Chile since 2018, one of the most reputed Infectious Diseases units in Chile. She is also a member of the board of directors of the NGO "Médicos Sin Marca" which seeks to promote evidence-based clinical practice, free from pharmaceutical influences. In 2017, after a superlative performance as a student union representative, she assumed the Chilean College of Physicians' presidency, being the first woman in this position and recently reelected in 2020 for a second period. Nowadays, after the social outbreak in Chile in October 2019, she leads the most valued institution for the Chilean population in a convoluted country. Notably, she and the Human Rights department of the Chilean College of Physicians have denounced the use of kinetic impact projectiles by the police, which resulted in severe ocular trauma and permanent disability to thousands of Chileans during the social outbreak. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been advised by a reputed group of experts from different disciplines, being the voice of evidence-based recommendations and interventions that connect with common sense and most disadvantaged populations. Siches has been the counterweight of a government with one of the highest mortality and contagion rates. Today, she still works in the pandemic response and argues for health rights in her country's new constitution, about to be written in April 2021.