The new leader of the World Health Organization is obsessed with numbers. Huge numbers, like three million AIDS patients he wants to provide with anti-retro-viral drugs, and 13 times that number infected with the disease. And smaller numbers, too, like thousands of new polio cases each year, despite the aggressive, and successful, decade-long WHO campaign to eradicate the disease.
But the most important number to Dr. Jong Wook Lee is fourteen-thousand. That’s the number of WHO employees he hopes will embrace his vision and plan of action for their Geneva based agency. He’s the WHO’s new Director General and wants to take his agency from headquarters to the field in the battle for global health. A conversation with the new disease gatekeeper.
Guests:
Dr. Jong-Wook Lee, the new Director General of the World Health Organization
Charles Piller, science writer for the Los Angeles Times