Huffington Post: Global Health Keeps Chaos Away
Philippe Douste-Blazy, under-secretary general of the U.N. and chair of UNITAID

“…[G]lobalization … offers unique opportunities to improve our world health. … We are fortunate to already have a tool: our United Nations’ agency for health, the World Health Organization, which stands at the core of those opportunities — if we can reform it and focus it on its areas of highest impact. While everyone agrees on the need to reform WHO, the matter of how to reform has garnered few proposals. … Besides focusing a greater part of its energies on a smaller set of priorities, in order to guarantee it can deliver results, WHO must also select as priorities the areas where it can bring the most comparative advantage, drive the most change, and trigger the most real-life impact. … Below are the five top issues that I would respectfully bring to this conversation. 1. Outbreak response … 2. Cancer, heart disease, and other [noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)] … 3. Universal health coverage … 4. Access to lifesaving medicines … 5. Saving antibiotics from resistance…” (11/1).