Transcript
LAEL BRAINARD: Good morning. It's a great privilege for Brookings to welcome the Director-General of the World Health Organization this morning. Director-General Brundtland.
Strobe Talbott unfortunately, I think, is on airplanes and was deeply disappointed not to be here for this important event. I as asked to introduce the Director-General, but I think she hardly needs introduction I think to everybody here. We all recognize her as a real standout in the pantheon of global public servants.
In addition to the public service that she rendered Norway as Minister of Health, as Minister of Environment, and as Prime Minister for ten years, Dr. Brundtland has rendered great public service to the world as a whole.
She initially came to great prominence on the world stage chairing the Brundtland Commission which back in 1987 put forward the concept of sustainable development that I think has shaped all of our thinking ever since and which led ultimately to the Rio Conference in 1992. Her contributions since, if anything, have been even greater.
As Director-General of the World Health Organization since 1998 she's credited with putting that organization back on the map and establishing the primacy of basic health in the fight against international poverty as an integral contributor to growth, not just a humanitarian concern.
I was able to observe the importance of her vision first-hand when I worked in the White House and Vice President Gore and President Clinton both were really inspired by her vision but also given kind of concrete direction by her very pragmatic proposal. Her fingerprints are all over the International Tobacco Control Initiative, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, efforts to make HIV/AIDS treatment drugs affordable in the poorest nations, and of course the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in all cases pioneering new partnerships between the private and public sectors and really changing the way that we do health internationally.
The international policy agenda I think came full circle for Dr. Brundtland when earlier this month the Johannesburg Summit made the connection between health, environment and development -- something she's been stressing now for over two decades.
I have the privilege also of being able to plug her new book, which I gather is coming out to a bookstore near you. I gather from it that you'll learn not only a great deal about policy but also about this phenomenal human being.
Over the past year the salience of the WHO's work on surveillance and epidemiology has risen even further as Americans, finally, have awoken to the painful realization that infectious diseases, whether manmade or caused by bioterrorism, do not respect national borders, and that health and governance crises in failed states far from our shores can have repercussions way too close to our own homes.
The contribution of health to overall economic growth and to state viability are areas of deep interest to Brookings scholars so it is doubly a pleasure for us to have her here today. And I hope you will join me in welcoming her.
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