UK's Nabarro tipped for GFATM post

According to Reuters in Geneva, Briton David Nabarro is the unexpected front-runner for the job as head of the Global Fund.

The Fund’s board, made up of representatives of donor and aid-receiving governments, as well as non-governmental groups, is due to select a successor for (Sir) Richard Feachem at a meeting next Thursday (8th Feb).

The other two short-listed candidates are evidently French AIDS envoy Michel Kazatchkine and Alex Coutinho, head of Uganda's AIDS Support Organisation.

Not surprisngly, no indication was given by Reuters as to why the other six candidates: Julio Frenk (Mexico), Carol Bellamy (USA), Kunio Waki (Japan), Jack Chow (USA), Arata Kochi (Japan), Brad Herbert (not sure), were not short-listed.

A selection committee has evaluated the three remaining nominees and ranked "Nabarro first, Kazatchkine second and Cotinho third," an apparently well-placed Fund source said.

This means that next week’s board meeting is now likely to be polarised in quite a different way to the fiasco last November, which failed to select a candidate because of a split between donor and recipient delegations. With Nabarro no doubt heavily backed by the UK government, and Kazatchkine’s French patrons rumoured as still reeling from his non-selection in 2006, this now looks like a battle to see which European donor nation will prevail.

We can save the CVs for next Friday, when we know who has (hopefully) been selected. For now though, a photo of David Nabarro is provided below. You might recall seeing Dr Nabarro appearing almost daily on television as the World Health Organization spokesman following the 2004 tsunami disaster. At the time Nabarro mistakenly predicted: “"There is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami.”

After a distinguished career in public health and positions with the UK’s Department for International Development, Dr Nabarro now coordinates crises and disasters at WHO.

David Nabarro is 58.