Dear Mr Medawar,

Thank you for your letter of 25 August 1998, to which I am replying only now since I was absent from the office on holidays and extensive duty travel. Please excuse this delay. However, I tried to call you on the phone on 1 September and I left a message on your answerphone.

Initially, when I read your letter of 9 July I felt I would like to have discussed this matter with you personally, more especially as you are very well known to my colleagues from the Division of Drug Management and Policies as well as by Dr Malcolm Lader. I appreciate your concern and your solidarity in our battle to enable peoples of the world to have access to better health care.

As you will see from the documents enclosed, the contribution from the Eli Lilly & Company Foundation goes to a very important project of our Division: Action Programme on Mental Health for Underserved Populations; this programme was created to ensure implementation of WHO's response at country level to the global burden of mental disorders. As such, it has no link of any kind to any drug manufactured by pharmaceutical enterprises and therefore there is no conflict of interest. I am also enclosing the document "Highlights of the fifth meeting of the Task Force on Health in Development" where you will find sections on "Guidelines on the Acceptability of Donations from Commercial Enterprises" and on "Partnerships for Health in the 21st Century".

Concerning the "informal consultation" that you mention in your letter of 9 July, this is part of the routine work carried out by our Division. Unfortunately, the project with which this consultation was concerned, is not active at present due to severe financial constraints, but eventually we will be pleased to invite observers like yourself or representatives from users' association to attend one of our meetings, when project activities are resumed.

In view of your interest in WHO, I am pleased to inform you that the new Director-General, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, is at present conducting wide-reaching reform in the Organization's structure. In this context, all the fundraising activities for extra-budgetary funds will be centralized under the Directorship of the Programme for Resource Mobilization, which will take over this task from the technical Divisions. In addiction to streamlining WHO's fundraising, this can be to the benefit of fundraising transparency.

Once again, I apologize for the delay of my reply and I hope you will understand my first reaction to your letter of 9 July. I would also like to thank you for your enquiry and concern relating to WHO keeping its independence in relation to working for public health, and I reiterate my invitation to receive you at WHO at your convenience, to discus topics of mutual interest.

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