Hiroshi Nakajima

Who was Hiroshi Nakajima?

Hiroshi Nakajima was a Japanese doctor. He was born in Chiba, Japan, on 16 May 1928. Nakajima received his M.D. from Tokyo Medical University, Japan. Dr Nakajima joined WHO in 1974 in the position of Scientist, Drug Evaluation and Monitoring. In 1976, he became Chief of the WHO Drug Policies and Management Unit. It was in this position that he played a key role in developing the concept of essential drugs, as Secretary of the first Expert Committee on the subject.

In 1978, the WHO Regional Committee for the Western Pacific nominated and elected Dr Nakajima as Regional Director, an office he held for two consecutive terms until 1988, when he was elected Director-General of WHO. In 1993, Dr Nakajima was re-elected to a second term of office as Director-General. In 1997, Dr Nakajima announced that he was not seeking another re-election and that his term of office would end in July 1998.

During his leadership at WHO he had a famous conflict with then head of the WHO's AIDS program Jonathan Mann which resulted in Mann's resignation. Conflict and its impact on WHO's AIDS efforts has been documented as a part of PBS Frontline documentary "The age of AIDS".