Jonathan Mann (WHO official)

Jonathan Max Mann (July 30, 1947-September 2, 1998) was an American physician who was an administrator for the World Health Organization.

Education

Mann was president of the National Honor Society in the Newton South High School class of 1965. He earned his B.A. from Harvard College, his M.D. from Washington University in St. Louis (1974), and the degree of M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1980.^[2]

Career

Mann was a key figure in the early fight against HIV/AIDS. He resigned his post at the WHO to protest the lack of response from the United Nations with regard to AIDS, and the actions of the then WHO director-general Hiroshi Nakajima. Mann's work against AIDS, his conflict with Nakajima and its impact on WHO's AIDS efforts have been documented as a part of PBS Frontline documentary "The age of AIDS".^[3] During Mann's tenure, the AIDS program became the largest single program in the history of the WHO. He was a key figure in highlighting the need for a global response to the crisis.

Mann died in the 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 along with his second wife, AIDS researcher Mary Lou Clements-Mann.^[4] At the time of his death, Mann was the dean of the Allegheny University School of Public Health, which is now the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia. Mann had three children with his first wife Marie Paule Bondat. They were divorced in 1995.

James Curran of the Centers for Disease Control said of Mann, "It was always safe for scientists and institutions to think of AIDS as a virus, a transmissible infection… but Dr. Mann structured it as a human rights issue, and a global rights issue.^[5]

Promoting health and human rights

Jonathan Mann was a pioneer in advocating combining the synergistic forces of public health, ethics and human rights. He theorized and actively promoted the idea that human health and human rights are integrally and inextricably connected, arguing that these fields overlap in their respective philosophies and objectives to improve health, well-being, and to prevent premature death.^[6]

Mann proposed a three-pronged approach to the fundamental issue of the relationship between health and human rights. First, health is a human rights issue. Secondly (and conversely), human rights are a health issue. Human rights violations result in adverse health effects.^[7] Thirdly, linkages exist between health and human rights (a hypothesis to be rigorously tested).^[8] Literature substantiates the effects of the first two points, but Mann and colleagues proceeded to call for the validation of the third point and challenged the world to practice it.^[9] His work led to the development of the Four-Step Impact Assessment, a multi-disciplinary approach of evaluating interdependent and overlapping elements of both disciplines of human rights and Public Health.

With this framework, Mann attempted to bridge a perceived gap of philosophies, correspondence and vocabulary, education and training, recruitment, and work methods between the disciplines of bioethics, jurisprudence, public health law and epidemiology. Furthermore, Mann knew that the history of "conflictual relationships" between officials of public health and civil liberties workers presented challenges to the pursuit of what he called a "powerful" confluence of health and human rights – a positive approach.^[10]

While conflict between disciplines exists, Mann thought it important to first raise awareness of these challenges. In the spirit of negotiation and acting as mediator, Mann pointed out that such an intersection of fields can only benefit if a common ground in philosophies is uncovered and planted with a flag of cooperation.

Mann’s was both visionary and practical in the pursuit of health and rights for all. He advocated non-discrimination, an ideal that reached beyond borders regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, socioeconomic status, and access to care. He was born in 1947, the year the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was drafted, and died in a plane crash with his wife in 1998 while on the way from New York to Geneva for a United Nations (UN) AIDS vaccine conference. An academic who spoke fluent French he served in several roles at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and in 1986 founded the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Global Program on AIDS. Mann had raised nearly $100 million in funding two years later. "The program was himself [Mann], a secretary and one typewriter," said colleague Daniel Tarantola.^[11] Later, in 1994, Mann directed the launch of the journal Health and Human Rights (journal), published by the François Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, which he also helped to establish.^[12] In 1990, Mann founded the health and human rights organization HealthRight International (initially known as Doctors of the World-USA), because he felt there was a void amongst the health and human rights organizations in the United States and he wanted to create a unique organization whose mission was to create sustainable programs that promote and protect health and human rights in the United States and abroad.^[13]

Bibliography

• Vamps, Virgins and Victims: How Can Women Fight Aids? Robin Gorna, Jonathan M. Mann
• Health and Human Rights: A Reader Sofia Gruskin, Jonathan M. Mann, Michael A. Grodin
• AIDS in the World II: Global Dimensions, Social Roots, and Responses Jonathan M. Mann, Daniel J. M. Tarantola

External links

• HealthRight International Homepage

References