Prime Minister Rama Nominates Deputy Speaker Klodiana Spahiu as Health Minister

Prime Minister Edi Rama has nominated Klodiana Spahiu, a cardiologist and Deputy Speaker of the Assembly, as Minister of Health and Social Welfare, a day after Evis Sala resigned from the post. Rama confirmed the nomination to Tirana Examiner on Thursday afternoon.

The proposal was made at Thursday’s meeting of the extended Socialist Party parliamentary group, the same session at which Rama set out his citizen–state reform package and asked MPs to criminalise their own intercession for public jobs.

Spahiu, 53, has sat in the Assembly since 2009, when she entered parliament at 36. She trained in medicine, worked at the first cardiology clinic of the Mother Teresa University Hospital Centre in Tirana, and spent six years as a cardiologist at Durrës hospital, which she also briefly directed. She holds a doctorate in medical sciences and has taught. In parliament she has served on several committees and subcommittees and in friendship groups, and she vacates a deputy speakership of the Assembly to take the post, the highest office of her political career.

She replaces Evis Sala, who announced her resignation at Wednesday’s cabinet meeting after less than a year in the post. Sala, who came to government from a long international academic and medical career, said she intends to continue her academic projects. In a statement afterwards she thanked the Prime Minister for the trust placed in her to lead an institution she described as facing major challenges, and added that her commitment to Albania “is not tied to a post or to an institution.”

Sala is the shortest-serving Health Minister of the four Rama governments. Ilir Beqaj held the ministry from September 2013 to March 2017, Ogerta Manastirliu from September 2017 to September 2023, and Albana Koçiu, now Deputy Prime Minister, from September 2023 to September 2025. Sala took over in September 2025.

The appointment now goes to President Bajram Begaj, who has seven days from the Prime Minister’s proposal to issue the decree. The Assembly is scheduled to vote on it on Tuesday, 8 September, at 17:00, after which Spahiu is sworn in before the head of state and takes office.

We published our assessment of Sala’s tenure on Wednesday.