Media Statement
9 April 2024
South Africa’s Professor Zukiswa Zingela re-elected to the International Narcotics Control Board
The Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Dr Naledi Pandor, has congratulated Professor Zukiswa Zingela on her re-election to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on 09 April 2024 in New York.
Professor Zingela was re-elected to the INCB in a highly competitive election, via the category of Member States, which had 25 candidates contesting five seats.
The INCB is an independent, quasi-judicial expert body tasked with assisting member states to comply with their obligations in terms of the three international drug control conventions, to ensure that adequate supplies of drugs are available for medical and scientific purposes whilst preventing their diversion into the illicit market.
The South African Government endorsed the nomination and re-election of Professor Zingela to the INCB for a five-year term, from 2025 to 2030. Professor Zingela has been a member of the INCB since 2020 through her nomination by the World Health Organisation for a five-year term which ends in 2025. She is the Second Vice-President of the INCB and Chair of the Standing Committee on Estimates. She was appointed as the board’s First Vice-President in 2022, Vice-Chair in 2021 and a member of the Standing Committee on Estimates in 2020. She chaired the Working Group on Availability from 2021 until 2023.
Professor Zingela is the Executive Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences, at Nelson Mandela University and the previous Head of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital and Walter Sisulu University. She is a member of the Medical and Dental Board of the Health Professions Council of South Africa. She is a registered specialist psychiatrist with more than two decades of experience in the profession and a strong history of teaching, research and mentorship as well as research and leadership in the area of substance use and addictions in psychiatry.
Professor Zingela holds an MBChb from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, an MMed Psych from the University of Pretoria, a FCPsych from the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa and a PhD Psychology from Nelson Mandela University. Her areas of interest and research publications include substance misuse, catatonia, traditional medicine and mental health, substance misuse and first episode psychosis, healthcare worker mental health, occupational mental health and public mental health.
Professor Zingela’s re-election, taking into consideration her wealth of experience, including as the Second Vice President of the INCB and her academic accolades, will further enhance the work of the INCB to carry out its mandate to support governments to meet their commitments of ensuring the availability of controlled substances for medical and scientific purposes while preventing their diversion, including ensuring the functioning of the international system for licit trade in controlled substances.
ISSUED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND COOPERATION
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