Richard Feachem

Sir Richard George Andrew Feachem, KBE, FREng was born in Manchester, UK in 1947. He took up his position as the first Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, in July 2002. Feachem is Professor of International Health at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, and was the founding Director of UCSF's Institute for Global Health (now part of UCSF Global Health Sciences). He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of London and an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland.

From 1995 until 1999 Feachem was Director for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank. Previously (1989-1995), he was Dean of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Feachem served as Chairman of the Foundation Council of the Global Forum for Health Research; Treasurer of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative; Council Member of Voluntary Service Overseas; and on numerous other boards and committees. He was one of 18 members of the WHO's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, and serves on the Commission on HIV and Governance in Africa. He has worked in international health and development since the early 1970s, when he worked on sanitation issues in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, and has published extensively on public health and health policy.

Feachem received his Doctor of Science degree in Medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a PhD in Environmental Health from the University of New South Wales. Initially trained in civil engineering, he is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians and of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. In 2002 he was elected to membership of the Institute of Medicine. In 1995, Feachem was awarded a CBE for services to international health by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In 2006 he was made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE). Feachem has also received honours from the Governments of Niger and Togo.

In March, 2006, Feachem announced his intention to step down from the Global Fund, effective July, 2006, in order to return to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he and his wife Neelam have made their permanent home. His successor, Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, a Global Fund Board member, was not confirmed until April 2007, at which time Feachem finally left the Global Fund.

Feachem is expected to return in September, 2007 to his work at UCSF, where he will lead health care financing initiatives and research in the Global Health Sciences program.