The United Nations cannot take a backseat to private philanthropic foundations and needs more money to combat diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, the French candidate to lead the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday, according to Reuters. Bernard Kouchner, a medical doctor who founded Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in 1971, said massive donations from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to treat AIDS and develop vaccines did not diminish the U.N. health agency's role. "We must improve the level of funding in WHO. I know that Mr. Bill Gates is a very generous person. But we cannot rely only on generosity," the former French health minister told a news briefing at the United Nations in Geneva. With a nearly $32 billion endowment, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest charity in the world. It has committed more than $6 billion in health grants worldwide, focusing on AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other ailments. Kouchner said the WHO -- with an annual programme budget of about $1.7 billion -- still had an essential role to play coordinating the myriad of government, private and non-profit agencies in the health field. "We must set up in every country, one by one, this level of health insurance ... an elementary basket of care for children and mothers," he said, without specifying where additional funds for the WHO should come from. Combating AIDS was a key priority for WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook, who died suddenly in May, three years into a five-year term. There are 13 candidates to lead the agency. Kouchner said fighting the AIDS pandemic would remain an important focus if he were to win the top job in global health. "But ... a lot of problems are neglected, including malaria. And what about infant mortality because of simple diarrhoea?" Other candidates for the position hail from Ecuador, Kuwait, Iceland, Myanmar, Lebanon, Japan, Finland, Turkey, Spain, Mexico, China and Mozambique. Campaigning is underway until a meeting of the WHO's 34-member executive board on Nov. 6-8, which will pick a name to put to the agency's top decision-making body, the 193-country World Health Assembly, on Nov. 9.
