Budi Sadikin, Indonesia’s Minister of Health and the country’s nominee for WHO Director General, has in fact spent most of his career in finance – as a top executive at Indonesia’s largest bank, PT Bank Mandiri TBk.
“Before, my job was to make my clients wealthy; now my job is to make my people healthy,” says Sadikin with a smile. Sadikin, who also holds an undergraduate degree in physics, believes his executive experience will help him tackle WHO reform, even as the organization 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.” The good relations he enjoys with the United States, politically and personally (he did several executive education stints at places like Wharton, Harvard and UC Berkeley), could also help pave the way for Washington to rejoin the WHO, he suggests.
But he also has a warning for Washington, saying: “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 podcast:
The podcast series with candidates is being co-produced by the SwissInfo media platform with the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Global Health Centre, as part of a collaboration covering the upcoming WHO election – also supported by Health Policy Watch.
See more about the candidates on Health Policy Watch’s special WHO election website.
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