Dr. Lee Jong-wook, 61; Director-General of the World Health Organization Who Tackled AIDS, Polio, TB

Dr. Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organization and the driving force in that agency’s effort to expand AIDS treatment to the developing world, died Monday in Geneva following surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain. The first Korean to head a United Nations agency, Lee was 61.

A 23-year veteran of WHO, Lee played a key role in eliminating polio from the Western Pacific and organizing the battle against tuberculosis before taking the agency’s reins in 2003 in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic and amid the initial signs of the avian flu crisis.

While managing those problems, he triggered the agency’s ambitious “3 by 5” campaign to bring at least half of the world’s 6.5 million AIDS victims into treatment by the end of 2005. Although the effort fell short of its goal, it marked the first serious international effort to bring pricey anti-AIDS drugs to the countries of Africa.

Lee fell ill Saturday at a luncheon marking the beginning of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, complaining of a severe headache and vomiting. He was taken to Cantonal Hospital in Geneva, where surgeons removed a subdural hematoma from his brain.

Such hematomas, or clots, can be caused by a blow to the head or by bleeding in the brain caused by an aneurysm. Lee was not known to have suffered a blow.

His death was announced Monday morning at the official opening of the assembly by Dr. Elena Salgado, Spain’s minister of health. Lee was to have addressed the assembly later in the day. A WHO spokesman said that Dr. Anders Nordstrom, assistant director for general management, will serve as acting director-general until the agency’s seventh director-general can be chosen.

Tributes poured in immediately.

“The world has lost a great man today,” said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “He was a strong voice for the right of every man, woman and child to health prevention and care, and advocated on behalf of the very poorest people.”

President Bush said in a statement that Lee “worked tirelessly to improve the health of millions of people, from combating tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS to his aggressive efforts to eradicate polio.”

More than 1,000 WHO staffers jammed into a Geneva hall Monday to pay tribute to the man who not only mingled freely with world leaders, but also traveled the world seeking out everyday people to ask them about their lives. Personal stories and photographs from such excursions were often the anchors for his public statements on global health policy.

Lee’s empathy for the common man was an outgrowth of his own experiences during the Korean War. He was only 5 years old when he joined his mother and two brothers on a 250-mile trek on foot through a bitterly cold winter to reunite with his father.

Lee subsequently said that when his father took them to a bakery for cookies, “I cried.”

His father and an older brother were politicians, but his mother urged him toward medicine as a way to earn a steady living.

He received his medical degree from Seoul National University, then enrolled at the University of Hawaii for a master’s degree in public health.

In 1983, he became a medical officer in WHO’s leprosy-control program in the region, enticed in part by the lure of scuba diving in Fiji.

A series of posts led to his 1990 appointment as head of the region’s polio-eradication project. Over a four-year period, the number of cases in the Pacific dropped from 5,963 to 700 as a result of a vaccination campaign.

As director-general, he had hoped to complete the eradication of the paralyzing disease from the world, but his efforts were foiled by the refusal of some groups, notably from the Kano region of Nigeria, to adopt vaccination programs.

In 1994, he moved to Geneva to head WHO’s Global Program for Vaccines and Immunization, where he spearheaded efforts to immunize the world’s children against a variety of infectious diseases.

During his four-year tenure in the post, he increased funding from $15 million a year to $70 million. In 1997, Scientific American christened him WHO’s “vaccine czar.”

He was named director of WHO’s Stop TB department in 2000, where he built what is widely recognized as one of the most successful international programs for improving access to drugs. It served as a model for subsequent efforts against malaria and HIV.

Since his rise to the top of WHO in 2003, Lee has presided over the ratification of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control -- the first public health treaty negotiated by the agency -- and the response to the 2004 Asian tsunami and the 2005 Pakistan earthquake.

His boldest effort, however, was the 3 by 5 initiative, which he undertook shortly after taking office. At the time, the agency’s response to the pandemic had been in abeyance since the mid-1990s, when Dr. Jonathan Mann resigned from the U.N.’s Global Program on AIDS to protest its lack of commitment.

Under his leadership, the program raised substantial amounts of new funding, coerced pharmaceutical companies into lowering prices, pushed for the approval of generic versions of patented drugs and helped establish healthcare infrastructure in the world’s poorest countries.

Although the program did not meet its ambitious goal, it more than tripled the number of people receiving treatment in poor countries to about 1.3 million and prevented an estimated 350,000 deaths. The program is now working toward the goal of having all 6.5 million people with AIDS receiving treatment by 2010.

Because of his efforts, Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2004.

A few days before his death, Lee told his staff that “there can be no ‘comfort level’ in the fight against HIV.” A key outcome of the 3 by 5 program, he said, “was the commitment to universal access by the end of 2010. To me, that means that no one should die because they can’t get drugs. It means that no one will miss being tested, diagnosed, treated and cared for because there aren’t clinics.”

Lee embraced life in Switzerland, taking full advantage of the opportunities for skiing, mountain biking and hiking. He took great pleasure in sharing good wine and food. He forbade the hiring of smokers and led the conversion of WHO’s fleet to environmentally friendly hybrid cars, using a Toyota Prius as his own official vehicle.

Fluent in Korean and English and conversant in French and Japanese, Lee enjoyed classical music, theater, Shakespeare and other great literature, frequently surprising colleagues with his precise recall of a book or play.

He is survived by his wife, Reiko; a son, Tad; two brothers; and a sister.