| Alexey Tsoi / Korea Times file |
An ethnic Korean was named the top health policymaker in Kazakhstan last month, according to the latest media reports.
Alexey Tsoi was appointed health minister on June 25 amid a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases in the Central Asian nation. Some of the country's officials have been treated for the coronavirus, including Tsoi's predecessor Elzhan Birtanov. Former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has also tested positive for the COVID-19.
The new health minister's immediate priority is to tackle the COVID-19 spread in the latter half of the year. As of Wednesday, 264 people have died from the coronavirus in Kazakhstan. “Our task is to stop the spread so as to see a reduction in the number of active cases,” he said at a briefing earlier this month.
Tsoi has taken a number of roles related to health and medicine in Kazakhstan.
Before being appointed the health minister, he served in a number of important posts, including the first vice minister of health and social development and chief of the Medical Center of the Office of the President's Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
He also served as the head physician of a municipal hospital in Astana and secretary general of the Eurasian Respiratory Society.
Born in 1977, he graduated with honors from the faculty of general medicine of the South Kazakhstan State Medical Academy. He studied in the graduate school of the Kazakh State Medical Academy from 2002 to 2004, and graduated from the law department of the Daneker Institute of International Law and International Business with a degree in law in 2007.
He is also known to be interested in health-related cooperation between Kazakhstan and Korea.