This book is an interconnected history of the evolution of global health in the decades before 2019, told through the prism of six decisive moments in which individuals from the World Health Organization (WHO), philanthropic foundations, academia and bilateral agencies came together to shape the world. These critical junctures are accessed via the life and work of Norwegian immunologist Tore Godal, one of the most influential health physicians of all time. Godal’s career over the past 50 years offers a window into the profound events that have shaped the health and well-being of millions across the globe, including the first free donation of a drug for the treatment of river blindness; the entry of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into the global health arena with a $750 million start-up grant for GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization; the 50% reduction in under-five mortality rates this century; the emergence of insecticide bed nets as the cornerstone of WHO malaria control; the rise of maternal and child health on the global political agenda; and the connection between Ebola and the creation of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in 2017. Exploring the ways in which the trajectory of global health has interwoven with the rich life and legacy of Godal, this book is a crucial resource for any reader interested in global health.

At the end of the Second World War, Britain had the highest incidence of lung cancer in the world. For the first time lung cancer deaths exceeded those from tuberculosis - and no one knew why. On 30 September 1950, a young physician named Richard Doll concluded in a research paper that smoking cigarettes was "a cause and an important cause" of the rapidly increasing epidemic of lung cancer. His historic and contentious finding marked the beginning of a life-long crusade against premature death and the forces of "Big Tobacco". Born in 1912, Doll, a natural patrician, jettisoned his Establishment background and joined the Communist Party as a reaction to the "anarchy and waste" of capitalism in the 1930s. He treated the blistered feet of the Jarrow Marchers, served as a medical officer at the retreat to Dunkirk, and became a true hero of the NHS. A political revolutionary and an epidemiologist with a Darwinian heart-of-stone, Doll fulfilled his early ambition to be "a valuable member of society". Doll steered a course through a minefield of medical and political controversy. Opponents from the tobacco industry questioned his science, while later critics from the environmental lobby attacked his alleged connections to the chemical industry. An enigmatic individual, Doll was feared and respected throughout a long and wide-ranging scientific career which ended only with his death in 2005. In this authorised and groundbreaking biography, Conrad Keating reveals a man whose life and work encapsulates much of the twentieth century. Described by the British Medical Journal as "perhaps Britain's most eminent doctor", Doll ushered in a new era in medicine: the intellectual ascendancy of medical statistics. According to the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse, his work, which may have prevented tens of millions of deaths, "transcends the boundaries of professional medicine into the global community of mankind."