WORLD : American Chief of AIDS Program Quits in Tiff With WHO Leader
Dr. Jonathan Mann, American head of the World Health Organization’s Global Program on AIDS, resigned today in a policy dispute with agency Director-General Hiroshi Nakajima of Japan.
Mann said in a letter there were too many differences between himself and Nakajima over running the $100-million-a-year program. Nakajima was appointed director-general in 1988.
“It has become increasingly evident, during the past two years, that a great variance exists on a series of issues which I consider critical for the Global AIDS Strategy and the Global Program on AIDS, between my position and that of the director-general,” Mann wrote.
WHO officials said privately that Nakajima wanted to dilute the considerable organizational autonomy that Mann had won for the AIDS program within WHO and that was the basic cause of friction between the two men.
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