PDF《The Launch of炉he烫ontrol》

15 Chapter

2 The Launch of?the?Control Programme?on?AIDS FakhryAssaad was taken aback: he had not putAIDS1 on the agenda for this meeting, but here they were, talking about AIDS.

?Arguing about AIDS was more like it. It was the end of 1984, and Fakhry Assaad (Picture 2.1)―then Director of the World Health Organization'

s (WHO) Division of Communicable Diseases―had gathered with a small group of WHO staff and advisors to discuss immunization and communicable diseases in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia.2 The morning session had centered on pertus- sis and the afternoon was spent on WHO'

s China program. And now, it was evening, and the discussion had somehow turned to AIDS. Since Assaad had omitted AIDS from the agenda, he found himself on the defen- sive and felt he needed to explain his position. He did not plan on engaging all of the Communicable Diseases Division on the problem, he explained;

it was something for high-income countries to handle. At this point in the meeting, one of the attend- ees challenged Assaad'

s stance: You think you are WHO, you are talking as if you were WHO, but you have to take into consideration AIDS! A heated discussion then broke out between the various participants over whether WHO should engage more fully in AIDS, and Assaad found himself on the losing end of the argument. Perhaps?Assaad?should not have been surprised.?By the end of 1984, a growing body of evidence indicated that AIDS would be a much greater problem than origi- nally imagined. Consequently,?key leaders both inside and outside WHO had finally awakened to the fact that the agency needed to addressAIDS more aggressively. But the main catalyst for substantive change would have to be Assaad.

1 ?For the purposes of this text, we will use the term AIDS to encompass both AIDS and HIV unless otherwise specified.

2 ?Meeting attendees included Vilimirovic, Dittman, Aswall, Ralph Henderson, and Assaad, among others. Fawsia Assaad, Interview by Michael Merson, New Haven, CT, July, 2002. Within this chapter the singular pronouns I and my refer to Michael Merson alone, whereas the ?plural?pronouns we and us generally refer to Michael Merson and Stephen Inrig jointly. Where we or?us refers to Michael Merson and his colleagues at WHO, the object of the pronoun is clarified by?context.

16 An Egyptian primary care physician who had worked with WHO as an Egyptian government counterpart, Assaad formally joined the organization in late 1959. First stationed in Taiwan, conducting epidemiological research? on trachoma, Assaad moved to WHO headquarters in Geneva in the summer of

1964 as a medical officer in the communicable diseases area. In 1981, just as AIDS emerged, Assaad became Chief of Virus Diseases;

less than a year later, following the retirement of his prede- cessor,Albert Zahra,Assaad became Director of WHO'

s Division of Communicable Diseases.3 While Assaad would eventually play an important role crafting WHO'

s first response to AIDS, initially (as we have suggested) he paid AIDS only scant atten- tion. His division and the WHO regional offices did begin tracking and reporting on AIDS in late

1982 and early 1983,4 but at this early date, Assaad committed little engagement from his division. He believed that WHO'

s mandate was to address the diseases of poorer nations and AIDS, he felt, was a Western disease that the affected

3 ?Ibid.

4 ? Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Weekly Epidemiological Record, April 8, 1983, 58(14):1C2. Picture 2.1?Fakhry Assaad (Photo courtesy of Fawsia Assaad. Photo by Fadyaha Haller―Assaad)