USAID. The two men drove around in an old jeep on rutted roads (Rohde was at the wheel). Rohde thinks it was probably during one of these road trips, as they bounced along, that Grant told his friend what he planned to do. The conversation went something like this.
“Now look, I’ve read this thing,” Grant said, referring to Rohde’s paper. “You say that the science is there.”
“Yes,” Rohde replied.
“The epidemiology is there,” Grant continued. “This is what they’re dying of?”
“Yes.”
“The science is there and the interventions are there.”
“Yes.”
Grant went on: “The organizational structure is there. We’ve got enough health workers who can do this. We don’t need doctors to do this. We don’t need ambulances. We could just do a mass campaign.”
Rohde agreed.
“In other words, we have all these things and no political will?”
“That’s right,” Rohde said. “That’s the problem.”
“Well,” Grant said. “I’m here to make the political will.”
Rohde knew such a colossal task was not so facile. “How and where are we going to get that?”
Grant replied simply, “That’s my job.”
But before winning over prime ministers and presidents and generals and donors and journalists and UN bureaucrats, he had to win over his own staff.
It would be the most important meeting of his life. On the weekend of September 25 and 26, 1982, Grant asked a group of UNICEF staff and outside experts to join him for two days at UNICEF headquarters on Forty-eighth Street and First Avenue in Manhattan. It was an informal gathering and does not appear on an official list of his meetings and trips for 1982. There may have been a reason for that—he might not have wanted the meeting to attract the attention of too many people. It could have alarmed them. More importantly, he did not want to go through proper channels if he didn’t have to. That would only invite interagency jealousy and a tussle for control.
What he needed to do was generate enough of a consensus to give him the legitimacy—or the appearance of legitimacy—to move forward. He also wanted to stoke a discussion about what worked and what didn’t, what his next steps might be—though he was already probably fairly certain.
There were twenty-five people—ten from UNICEF and fifteen from outside organizations—who met in a stuffy, windowless conference room on the sixth floor, not far fromGrant’s office. Everyone crammed around a large, oblong table. The space was not designed to hold this many people; some had to squeeze between the wall and the chair backs to get to their seats.
The stated theme of the meeting was nutrition, but the discussions veered from poverty reduction to primary health care to the need for community participation to curative versus preventive health care. Grant brought up the Green Revolution of the 1960s, when American plant scientist Norman Borlaug developed high-yield wheat seeds that averted starvation for up to one billion people. Borlaug is estimated to have saved more lives than any other person in history, and he was a big hero of Grant’s. Grant wanted to do for child health what Borlaug had done for agriculture. He told attendees that a “global movement” was needed to spur a “revolution in child health.”
Sometime that afternoon, Rohde gave a presentation based on his child mortality lecture. He used a flip chart and felt-tip markers and scrawled out big numbers. One was six million: the number of kids who died from diarrhea every year. “We can save six million lives from diarrhea alone,” Rohde told the attendees. “And we’re not doing it.” He went through the interventions he believed would save the most lives.
The response was muted. Not everyone reacted the way Grant had.
As Dave Haxton listened to Rohde’s presentation, an old Harry James tune ran through his head:
It seems to me I’ve heard that song before
. Haxton and Rohde had, in fact, both
“Now look, I’ve read this thing,” Grant said, referring to Rohde’s paper. “You say that the science is there.”
“Yes,” Rohde replied.
“The epidemiology is there,” Grant continued. “This is what they’re dying of?”
“Yes.”
“The science is there and the interventions are there.”
“Yes.”
Grant went on: “The organizational structure is there. We’ve got enough health workers who can do this. We don’t need doctors to do this. We don’t need ambulances. We could just do a mass campaign.”
Rohde agreed.
“In other words, we have all these things and no political will?”
“That’s right,” Rohde said. “That’s the problem.”
“Well,” Grant said. “I’m here to make the political will.”
Rohde knew such a colossal task was not so facile. “How and where are we going to get that?”
Grant replied simply, “That’s my job.”
But before winning over prime ministers and presidents and generals and donors and journalists and UN bureaucrats, he had to win over his own staff.
It would be the most important meeting of his life. On the weekend of September 25 and 26, 1982, Grant asked a group of UNICEF staff and outside experts to join him for two days at UNICEF headquarters on Forty-eighth Street and First Avenue in Manhattan. It was an informal gathering and does not appear on an official list of his meetings and trips for 1982. There may have been a reason for that—he might not have wanted the meeting to attract the attention of too many people. It could have alarmed them. More importantly, he did not want to go through proper channels if he didn’t have to. That would only invite interagency jealousy and a tussle for control.
What he needed to do was generate enough of a consensus to give him the legitimacy—or the appearance of legitimacy—to move forward. He also wanted to stoke a discussion about what worked and what didn’t, what his next steps might be—though he was already probably fairly certain.
There were twenty-five people—ten from UNICEF and fifteen from outside organizations—who met in a stuffy, windowless conference room on the sixth floor, not far fromGrant’s office. Everyone crammed around a large, oblong table. The space was not designed to hold this many people; some had to squeeze between the wall and the chair backs to get to their seats.
The stated theme of the meeting was nutrition, but the discussions veered from poverty reduction to primary health care to the need for community participation to curative versus preventive health care. Grant brought up the Green Revolution of the 1960s, when American plant scientist Norman Borlaug developed high-yield wheat seeds that averted starvation for up to one billion people. Borlaug is estimated to have saved more lives than any other person in history, and he was a big hero of Grant’s. Grant wanted to do for child health what Borlaug had done for agriculture. He told attendees that a “global movement” was needed to spur a “revolution in child health.”
Sometime that afternoon, Rohde gave a presentation based on his child mortality lecture. He used a flip chart and felt-tip markers and scrawled out big numbers. One was six million: the number of kids who died from diarrhea every year. “We can save six million lives from diarrhea alone,” Rohde told the attendees. “And we’re not doing it.” He went through the interventions he believed would save the most lives.
The response was muted. Not everyone reacted the way Grant had.
As Dave Haxton listened to Rohde’s presentation, an old Harry James tune ran through his head:
It seems to me I’ve heard that song before
. Haxton and Rohde had, in fact, both
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