ABSTRACT
Focusing on the interconnection between the influences and social mores of Godal’s early life in rural Norway, and his career in tropical disease research in Africa, this chapter explores the great acceleration of research in molecular and cell biology in the 1960s and 1970s, and the emergence of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), as the Director of TDR Godal sought to shape the Geneva-based institution into a global force to combat diseases of poverty through the rational application of science, innovation and cost-effective programmes. Having developed a strategy to advance the immunology of leprosy with the aim of developing a vaccine against the disease, Godal intended TDR to build capacity in low- and middle-income countries in order to conduct research themselves. ‘The goal must be’, Godal wrote, ‘for risk-benefit decisions to be made as close as possible to the populations at risk - and ideally by that population’. In 1998, another Norwegian physician, Gro Harlem Brundtland became WHO Director-General. Acting as Brundtland’s adviser, Godal was able to use his worldwide tropical health diseases network as both a lens and a compass to aid his Norwegian colleague to redesign the architecture of global public health.
