Michel Kazatchkine

Professor Michel Kazatchkine has spent the past 30 years fighting AIDS and working to improve global health as a physician, researcher, advocate, policymaker, diplomat and administrator. Professor Kazatchkine attended medical school in Paris, studied immunology at the Pasteur Institute and completed postdoctoral fellowships at St Mary’s Hospital in London and Harvard Medical School. From 1984, he has been Professor of Medicine at the Université René Descartes in Paris. From 1990 to 2005, he was Head of the Department of Clinical Immunology at the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou and of a Research Unit at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM). During his academic carrier, Professor Kazatchkine has produced more than 500 research papers and has served on numerous editorial boards. From 1998 to 2005, Professor Kazatchkine was director of the French National Research Agency (ANRS), the world’s second largest AIDS research program. During this time, ANRS shifted its focus from domestic research to public health work in Africa and the developing world. From 2005 to 2007, Professor Kazatchkine was France’s global Ambassador for HIV/AIDS and transmissible diseases. As Ambassador, he championed France’s contributions to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the establishment of UNITAID. Professor Kazatchkine has served on several major international boards and committees, including as Chair of the World Health Organization’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS and as a member of the WHO Scientific and Technical Advisory Group on Tuberculosis. Between 2002 and 2005 he served as the first Chair of the Technical Review Panel of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, leading the development of the Fund’s rigorous, transparent and accountable process for reviewing grant applications. He served as Vice-Chair of the Board of the Global Fund between 2005 and 2006. In 2007, he was appointed as the Executive Director of the Global Fund and served in this position until March 2012. In his five years leading the Fund, more than $20 billion in additional donor commitments and pledges were mobilized. Professor Kazatchkine oversaw a major expansion of the Global Fund’s operations and grant portfolio, establishing the Fund as the major international financer of health programs. His leadership of the Global Fund consolidated his reputation as a leading global advocate for health and human rights. In July 2012, Professor Kazatchkine was appointed as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In this position, he focuses on building high-level political support for national and regional responses to the HIV epidemic and advocates for improved access to prevention, treatment and care for the populations most in need. Professor Kazatchkine is also a Senior Fellow with the Global Health Centre of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Professor Kazatchkine holds honorary degrees from Imperial College, London, the Free University of Brussels and the Catholic University of Louvain. He is an Officer of the Légion d’Honneur and of the Ordre du Mérite in France, and has been awarded national distinctions from Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Vietnam and Uzbekistan.