Dr. Lee adalah ketua umum organisasi kesehatan dunia, WHO, periode 2003-2006. Nama beliau saya temukan dalam catatan Fran Baum (1), salah satu materi bacaan course di Public Health Flinders University. Mencermati kiprah beliau yang fenomenal, saya teringat kegiatan imunisasi yang demikian progresif dan program TB yang hidup semasa saya menjalankan tugas sebagai dokter dan kepala puskesmas di kecamatan Anreapi, Polewali Mandar, Sulawesi Barat.
Saya belum sempat tahu pada waktu itu, bahwa kesibukan kami dalam program vaksinasi dan program TB yang didanai lembaga asing itu, ternyata dimotori oleh seorang yang berasal dari Korea Selatan, seorang dokter yang dipuji oleh dunia karena kemampuannya menghidupkan kolaborasi anatar negara, pemimpin politik dan kalangan pasar untuk terjun ke lapangan dalam memberantas kemiskinan, dan ketidak setaraan penduduk dunia. Sayang sekali beliau harus wafat dalam usia yang masih sangat muda, di puncak karier kepemimpinannya, setelah pada satu jamuan makan siang di kantornya bulan April 2006, sumbatan otak menghentikan langkahnya, cita-cita yang hampir tak dapat dilanjutkan dengan baik oleh penerusnya, Dr. Margareth Chan.
Berikut, biagrafi hidup beliau, dari website WHO (2).
LEE Jong-wook was nominated on 28
January 2003 by the World Health Organization's Executive Board for the post of
Director-General of the agency and elected to the post on 21 May by the Member
States of WHO for a five-year term.
Prior to his work as
Director-General, Dr Lee was a world leader in the fight against two of the
greatest challenges to international health and development - tuberculosis, and
vaccine preventable diseases of children. Since the appointment as Director of
the Stop TB Department in WHO in 2000 – and building on previous experience as
head of the Global Programme on Vaccines and Immunization – Dr Lee rapidly
built what is internationally recognized as one of the most successful and dynamic
global public-private partnerships for health; the Global Partnership to Stop
TB. Credited by the Boston Globe as having brought the leadership and political
skills needed to build consensus and ‘spur former antagonists to work
together’, Dr Lee led the growth of a remarkable and complex coalition of more
than 250 international partners that includes WHO Members States, donors, NGOs,
industry and foundations.
Dr Lee’s work in tuberculosis
control and vaccines demonstrated his personal strategic focus on health
interventions to reduce poverty. In accelerating movement to reach the global
immunization goals – including polio eradication – and hastening progress
towards the global TB control targets, he led efforts which will make a
substantial contribution to reaching the Millennium Development Goals. Shortly
after his appointment to Stop TB, he launched the Global Drug Facility (GDF) -
a new initiative to increase access to TB drugs, with substantial financial
support from several multilateral agencies, governments and foundations, the
GDF has already made a significant impact and is increasingly being viewed as a
model for increasing access to drugs for other diseases of poverty, such as
HIV/AIDS and malaria.
His commitment to action and focus
on countries ensured that what counts is results – a feature that has been
clearly evident from early in his career. As head of polio eradication
initiatives in the Western Pacific from 1990 to 1994, he oversaw a reduction in
reported polio cases from 5963 to 700 in the Region. In 1994, Dr Lee moved to
WHO headquarters in Geneva as Director of the WHO Global Programme for Vaccines
and Immunization (GPV) and Executive Secretary of the Children’s Vaccine
Initiative – a global campaign to catalyze development of new and improved
vaccines for children. He quickly established a reputation as a visionary
leader and strong manager. Dubbed as WHO’s ‘Vaccine Czar’ by the Scientific
American magazine in 1997, he was responsible for a series of strategic
developments in GPV. These included an open approach to working with industry,
a review of the short-, mid- and long-term mission of GPV, an increase in
funding from $15 million to nearly $70 million between 1994 and 1998, and
management reforms to assure the highest technical competence of staff and
increase the proportion of women in professional posts.
In 1998, having joined the newly
formed cabinet as Senior Policy Adviser to the Director-General of WHO, he was
closely involved in the WHO reform process, and maintained a strong commitment
to supporting Members States by strengthening the regional and country
structure of the Organization. As Special Representative of the
Director-General, he was responsible for several crucial WHO initiatives,
including those in the Horn of Africa and East Timor.
Dr Lee probably knew WHO better than
most, having worked for more than 20 years in technical, managerial and policy
positions at all levels in the Organization – country, region and headquarters.
He began his WHO career in 1983 as a leprosy consultant in the South Pacific,
and a year later was appointed team leader for leprosy control in the South
Pacific. In 1986 he moved to the Western Pacific Regional Office in Manila,
initially in the Regional Leprosy Control Programme and later as Regional
Adviser on Chronic Diseases.
Since Dr Lee took office as
Director-General, the Organization has achieved some notable milestones in
public health; ratifying the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (the first
public health treaty negotiated by WHO); adopting a revised set of
International Health Regulations; and leading the health response to avian
influenza, the Asian tsunami, and the Pakistan earthquake.
The Director-General released
several landmark publications with the aim of prompting a substantial response
to some of the greatest health challenges facing the world, most notably the
annual World Health Reports, which have focused on the AIDS treatment gap
(2004); the appalling burden of suffering and death faced by pregnant women and
children, with a call to 'make every mother and child count' (2005); and a
commitment to address the health workforce crisis facing most developing
countries (2006). The Report for 2007 takes the theme of health and security,
emphasizing the central relationship between health, peace and human security.
Prior to joining WHO, Dr Lee worked
for two years at the LBJ Tropical Medical Centre in American Samoa. A national
of the Republic of Korea, he received his Medical Doctor (MD) degree from Seoul
National University Medical School of Medicine, and a Master of Public Health
degree from the University of Hawaii, School of Public Health.
Dr Lee was born in 1945. He is
survived by his wife and son, two brothers and a sister and their families.
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