Over the past decade, Ms. Lillian Salerno has been a tireless and effective advocate for making safe healthcare practices available to patients and healthcare workers around the world. Trained as an attorney, she served as president of the International Association of Safe Injection Technology (IASIT), a Geneva, Switzerland-based nonprofit organization she founded in 2001 to promote the use of safe medical devices throughout the world. In that capacity, Ms. Salerno represented IASIT, whose members include the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Medical Association, The World Health Organization, the International Council of Nurses, the International Labor Organization and virtually all of the world’s syringe and needle device manufacturers, in key forums on safe healthcare practices and medical device safety, notably the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Steering Committee on Immunization Safety and the Safe Injection Global Network (SIGN), the World Bank’s International Forum for Promoting Safe and Affordable Medical Technologies, The NIH Innovative Administration Systems for Vaccines, The Safe Healthcare Working Group, Washington DC and the World Health Assembly. Ms. Salerno has also participated in forums on safe healthcare at individual country level meetings in Geneva, Paris, UK, Washington, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, China, Cambodia, Egypt, India, and the Philippines.

Over the last five years Ms. Salerno has worked with US legislators and Executive Branch formulating solutions for protection of healthcare workers and delivery systems. Before serving IASIT, Ms. Salerno founded Meditrade International, a Geneva-based firm she established to implement international distribution and technology transfer agreements for medical device companies with entities in developing world. From 1994 to 2000, she was a senior executive and director of Retractable Technologies, Inc., a leading maker of automated retraction safety needle devices based in Texas. In the early 1990s, she assisted in starting the company originating with a Small Business Innovative Research Grant from the National Institutes of Health. Among other responsibilities for the now publicly traded company, she vigorously pushed for state and federal safe needle legislation. Since the passage of the federal Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act in November 2000, Ms. Salerno has focused her attention on the international health crisis caused by unsafe healthcare practices in the developing world. Ms. Salerno, a long-term HIV/AIDS prevention advocate, currently travels and speaks in Sub-Saharan Africa to Ministers of Health and other stakeholders encouraging implementing safe health care practices as an immediate and effective HIV/AIDS prevention strategy. Ms. Salerno worked with legislative leaders, civil society and industry to direct monies under President Bush’s AIDS Initiative (PEPFAR) to programs which encompass these strategies.

A native of Dallas, Texas Ms. Salerno, 47, received a B.A. degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. in Sociology from the University of North Texas, and a J. D. degree from Southern Methodist University. She is a member of the American Bar Association and Texas Bar Association. She serves on several committees regarding safe healthcare delivery in Africa and on the Board of Advisors for The African Health and Security Institute at George Washington University in Washington DC. Ms. Salerno currently resides in the Washington, DC area.