Swissinfo / Kai Reusser
Here is episode two of our series in partnership with the Global Health Centre at Geneva’s Graduate Institute, bringing you exclusive interviews with the candidates for director general of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Budi Sadikin is currently Indonesia’s health minister, but has spent most of his career in finance, as a top executive at Indonesia’s biggest bank. “Before, my job was to make my clients wealthy; now my job is to make my people healthy,” he says with a smile. Sadikin believes his experience in finance will help him tackle WHO reform, even as the organisation suffers big cuts in donor funding.
But he is also a firm believer in health equity, telling us that during a global pandemic, emergency treatments “should become global public goods.” He says his good relations with the United States will help him encourage Washington to rejoin the WHO, but also warns that “if any country believes it can safeguard its population on its own during the next pandemic, that is scientifically and practically impossible.”
Listen to the full interview and subscribe to our Inside Geneva podcast.
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