Ruby Pawankar, an Indian doctor based in Tokyo, has been elected as the president of the World Allergy Organisation (WAO) at the world allergy congress in Cancun, Mexico.

Pawankar, a recipient of Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award 2010, will be the first woman president of the World Allergy Organisation and also the first Indian to hold this position.

An expert in the field of allergy and clinical immunology she is a professor at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo and a guest professor at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

"I am much honoured to be elected to the position of president of WAO. The two-year presidential term of mine will start on January 1, 2012," Pawankar, who was in Delhi for a brief visit, said.

Her presidential theme is 'severe allergies, severe asthma: the unmet global health problem'.

Pawankar said the WAO, founded in 1951, is a member of the Council for International Organisations of Medical Science (CIOMS) and has a working relationship with the World Health Organisation.

The WAO is an international umbrella organisation whose members consist of 89 regional and national allergology and clinical immunology societies from around the world.

With its headquarters in Milwaukee, USA, WAO provides direct educational outreach programs, symposia and lectureships to its members in nearly 100 countries around the globe and reaching out to over 45,000 members.