My decade leading the WHO: dirty fights and steps toward universal coverage

As a young doctor working in Hong Kong’s department of maternal and child health, I learned some lessons that would last me a lifetime. Trained by the British civil service, I absorbed the importance of discipline and a methodical approach to every task. But I always ran behind schedule in my appointments with patients because I spent time trying to find the root causes of illnesses that came as much from social circumstances as from microbes. I could cure a child with a severe respiratory illness, but when that child went home to a damp and moldy house, I knew I would see her again with the same illness.

In 1994, when I became the director of Hong Kong’s department of health, I learned the lesson that it is wise to do whatever it takes to get government