Faculty Bibliography

Preparing for the end of polio, the World Health Organization is focusing on learning where stocks of the virus exist and encouraging laboratories to tighten controls to prevent accidental release of the virus, officials said here yesterday. The risk of polio virus getting loose is one reason WHO has asked countries to conduct inventories to determine which of their laboratories have kept polio virus in freezers. So far 80 countries have provided such lists. Even if WHO stops transmission of polio, many countries are expected to continue polio immunizations for some time until they are confident that the virus is not lurking undetected somewhere and for other reasons. Because polio virus is needed to manufacture the vaccine, a number of countries will need to maintain stocks of polio virus, [David L. Heymann] said in an interview

Dr. [Jong Wook Lee] initially intended to become a practicing physician. But he dropped out of the training program to enroll in a public health program at the University of Hawaii, in part because he believed he could do good for more people. While he took courses, Dr. Lee traveled through Micronesia to treat leprosy patients and used the blood samples he collected to develop a faster laboratory test for leprosy. Dr. Lee succeeds Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway, who strove to escalate health's position on the political agenda of world leaders. Dr. Lee's career as a field epidemiologist and technocrat might make him appear to have less political clout than someone who has led a nation. But Dr. Lee said he gained political experience from dealing with ministers of health over the years. The W.H.O. works with an annual budget of $1.1 billion, 60 percent of which comes from voluntary contributions, that cannot pay for all his ambitious plans. Dr. Lee is confident he can raise more money because, he said, he ''never suffered from a shortage of funds'' in the programs he has led. ''What counts is results,'' Dr. Lee said, and donors will pay if W.H.O.'s programs turn out to be effective and of high quality

The W.H.O. has also served as an umbrella agency to allow American epidemiologists to investigate outbreaks when, for diplomatic or other reasons, an American agency could not work comfortably in a particular country. Occasionally, the Centers for Disease Control has sent epidemiologists to countries that are not health organization members, as with the SARS outbreak in Taiwan. Dr. Peter Piot, the director of the United Nations AIDS program here, said he ''would have done the same'' if he had not lost to Dr. [Jong Wook Lee] in the election for director general of the health agency earlier this year. The proposed epidemiologic program would ''strengthen systems to monitor diseases, which are weak in many countries, and bring more young people into W.H.O.,'' he said. In 1978, Dr. Piot, a Belgian, was among the first non-Americans to take the Centers for Disease Control's course. The W.H.O., like the C.D.C., will select which outbreaks it will send trainees to investigate. Dr. Lee's biggest problem may be in making such decisions, said Dr. Alfred Sommer, the dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and a graduate of the American program. ''Since W.H.O. is governed by its participant nations, how will he not agree to send teams whenever a country asks?''

The plan for an epidemiology program reflects in part a May vote by representatives of member countries to give the agency a stronger hand in investigating outbreaks. The SARS epidemic underscored the need not only to battle epidemics but also to train future leaders in academic and research centers and health departments, as CDC's program has done, [Jong Wook Lee] said. For many years, people have dreamed about doing it, and so I decided, let's do it. Initial reactions were positive. As the director of the global health agency, it seems natural that Dr. Lee would wish to create a truly global EIS as part of his shop, said Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore

[Gro Harlem Brundtland] leaves with generally high marks for revitalizing the organization's morale, credibility and international stature and for attaining a number of other goals that she said she helped achieve by drawing on the skills she honed in politics. A daughter of a politically oriented physician and longtime Norwegian cabinet minister, Brundtland served three terms as the prime minister of Norway, the first woman to hold the post, before becoming the first former head of government to lead the health organization, a United Nations agency. In an interview, Brundtland said she counted among her accomplishments making drugs more accessible to people in poor countries, bringing polio closer to eradication, making gains in the control of tobacco use and developing a bold new model to deal with global health threats like SARS. Critics wish she had done more. But, she said, the organization's activities have been limited by its budget of $1 billion a year, about 60 percent of that from contributions. The gains, she said, owe to her career-long efforts to persuade world leaders to take science seriously and to put health issues high on the political agenda. The advances also came from seizing opportunities created by unexpected events like SARS

The advances also came from seizing opportunities created by unexpected events like SARS. ''People learned a lot from SARS about basic public health realities,'' Dr. [Gro Harlem Brundtland] said. In 1998, Dr. Brundtland's first priority was to improve the agency's morale. But some staff members and outside critics say that it still has many bureaucratic problems that Dr. Jong-Wook Lee of South Korea, a member of Dr. Brundtland's staff, will face when he succeeds her on Monday. Dr. Brundtland also stood up to China when the agency learned that officials there had suppressed information or lied about early cases of SARS. After becoming the focus of severe international criticism, China yielded and began reporting the information to the W.H.O. The agency has credited these and other measures with stopping the international spread of SARS, at least temporarily

[Gro Harlem Brundtland] leaves with generally high marks for revitalizing the organization's morale, credibility and international stature and for attaining a number of other goals that she said she helped achieve by drawing on the skills she honed in politics. A daughter of a politically oriented physician and longtime Norwegian cabinet minister, Brundtland served three terms as the prime minister of Norway, the first woman to hold the post, before becoming the first former head of government to lead the health organization, a United Nations agency. In an interview, Brundtland said she counted among her accomplishments making drugs more accessible to people in poor countries, bringing polio closer to eradication, making gains in the control of tobacco use and developing a bold new model to deal with global health threats like SARS. Critics wish she had done more. , a former president of the Robert Wood Jo, New Jersegeneral of the World He Her term began in 1998 at one of the lowest points in the agency's 55-year history. Brundtland succeeded Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima of Japan, who was widely criticized as an administrator in his 10 years in the post. In 1998, Brundtland's first priority was to improve the agency's morale. But some staff members and outside critics say that it still has many bureaucratic problems that Dr. Jong Wook Lee of South Korea, a member of Brundtland's staff, will face when he succeeds her next Monday. Brundtland quickly became involved in international politics to push health issues higher on the political agenda

Last year, Dr. [BELDING H. SCRIBNER] won the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research for transforming kidney failure from a fatal disease to a treatable one in 1960. The device he invented, known as the Scribner shunt, allowed patients with kidney failure to be connected to a dialysis machine. Dialysis has also kept more than 100,000 Americans alive long enough to receive a kidney transplant. Dr. Scribner's solution was to sew U-shaped tubes, or shunts, in an artery and in a vein. For each dialysis treatment, doctors could plug additional tubes into the device and attach them to an artificial kidney, creating a circuit for blood to flow from the artery to be cleansed of toxic substances in the dialysis machine before returning to the body through the vein

Last year, [Belding Scribner] received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research for transforming kidney failure from a fatal disease to a treatable one in 1960. The device he invented, known as the Scribner shunt, allowed patients with kidney failure to be connected to a dialysis machine. Scribner's solution was to sew U-shaped tubes, or shunts, in an artery and in a vein. For each dialysis treatment, doctors could plug additional tubes into the device and attach them to an artificial kidney, creating a circuit for blood to flow from the artery to be cleansed of toxic substances in the dialysis machine before returning to the body through the vein

SARS has affected a large number of doctors, nurses and other health workers in Toronto and elsewhere. Some have died. Others have lain in intensive care units for weeks, breathing only with the aid of mechanical respirators, and may yet die. The catastrophe has left many who escaped SARS ''with guilt feelings and fears of catching the viral infection,'' Dr. [James Brunton] said. In battling infectious diseases, as in wars, some people are more courageous than others, though the effort in SARS is largely voluntary. Dr. Brunton said he observed different responses to SARS among his colleagues. Some doctors declined to examine patients suspected of SARS. Some doctors move to the opposite side of the room when colleagues who have cared for SARS patients are present. Some who appeared to be outstanding and fearless in their usual work in the hospital suddenly collapsed in the SARS outbreak because they were worried about becoming infected or infecting their families, he said