IRELAND: Much more can be done to improve healthcare in developing nations, according to one of the main candidates to become leader of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Bernard Kouchner, a former French minister for health and humanitarian affairs, said that a health insurance system needed to be set up to better share the burden between rich and poor countries.
"A lot has been done, but not enough," he said. "The gap is still enormous between the rich nations and the poor nations . . . it's like day and night. Life expectancy in some parts of Africa is less than 40 years. In my country it is more than 83 years."
One of the founders of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in 1971, Mr Kouchner was speaking on Tuesday to a packed lecture theatre at Dublin's Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
He said the first cause of sickness and disease in the world was poverty and that giving more money to poorer nations would help contain the spread of diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria throughout the world.
The WHO is currently focusing on 13 neglected tropical diseases.
Mr Kouchner argued that more needed to be done to tackle preventable daily diseases such as malaria, which is now causing close to two million deaths a year.
Low-income countries are affected by at least five of these diseases at a time, many of which can be prevented or cured with drugs that cost $1.50 (€1.20).
In highlighting the need to better distribute the money allocated to healthcare, Mr Kouchner said that France spends $2,500 (€1,990) per person a year to give them access to the healthcare system.
The 66-year-old also stressed the need to empower women in politics and society, as women were the main victims in developing countries.
Mr Kouchner is among a dozen candidates to succeed Lee Jong-wook, the WHO leader who died in May. Mr Kouchner said he hoped to continue the fight he has been involved in for 40 years by being appointed at a session of the World Health Assembly on November 9th.