Vytenis Andriukaitis

Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis (born 9 August 1951) is WHO Special Envoy for the European region, the former European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, a heart surgeon, a co-signatory to the 1990 Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. Andriukaitis' family was deported to Siberia in June 1941. He, his mother and two older brothers were allowed to return to Lithuania in 1958; his father returned in 1959. After excelling at school, he enrolled at Kaunas Medical Institute, graduating in 1975. In 1976 Andriukaitis started his career in politics as a member of the underground Social Democrat movement, but later continued his studies by pursuing a degree in history at Vilnius University, graduating in 1984. Andriukaitis was elected to the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, which preceded Seimas (Lithuanian Parliament), in 1990. Andriukaitis was a member of the Lithuanian Parliament for six terms, from 1992 to 2004 and from 2008 to 2012, and was a deputy chairman of its council from 2001 to 2004. He was a health minister of the Republic of Lithuania since December 2012 until the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker appointed him to serve as an EU Commissioner in November 2014. After the term as European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Andriukaitis became WHO Special Envoy for the European region in March 2020. Early life Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis was born in Kyusyur, Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR. His father, Alfonsas Andriukaitis and mother Liuda Andriukaitienė, pregnant at the time, together with two small children were deported from Lithuania to Siberia by Soviet Communists in June 1941. While there, they only had access to Russian literature; Andriukaitis learned Lithuanian from his mother, who would write down Lithuanian fairy tales, which he would later read.