Maria L. Avila-Aguero is a doctor of Pediatric Infectology at the Hospital Nacional de Niños “Dr. Carlos Sáenz Herrera”. She served as Head of the Department of Infectology from 2000 to 2006 and has continued to fill this role once again since September 2011. She is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Universidad de Costa Rica. She also serves as Director of Post Graduate Studies in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Universidad de Costa Rica. She served as Minister of Health for Costa Rica from May 2006 to August 2011. Before her role as Costa Rican Minister of Health, she was the Director of the Committee on Nosocomial Infections (1999-2005) and Director of the Committee on Epidemiological Surveillance (2000-20005). She has received several awards; among other accomplishments, she was named 1 of the 50 most influential women in Central America by Forbes 2014. Since 2014, she has coordinated the GREEN initiative (Advisory Board of the Latin American Pneumococcal Disease Consortium) and has been a Member of various scientific and academic organizations, including SLIPE (Latin American Society of Pediatric Infectious Diseases). Since 2016, she has been a Member of the Council of the International Society for Infectious Diseases and REKAMLATINA (Latin America Kawasaki Disease Network). Since 2018, she has been an Affiliate Researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis (CIDMA) at Yale University.
