INTERVIEW: Sir Gus's big picture view

Ruth Beran asked Sir Gustav Nossal about Australia's latest institute -- which just happens to bear his name.

Prof Sir Gustav Nossal is the patron of the new Nossal Institute for Global Health, established by the University of Melbourne.

Currently an emeritus professor at the university, Sir Gustav retired in 1996 as the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research's director and as professor of medical biology.

"I'm not going to have an operational role within the institute," said Sir Gustav. "I don't believe in ruling from the grave, so I will not be involved in the actual running of the institute -- although as patron they've been kind enough to consult me on strategic directions right along the track."

The Nossal Institute will focus on global health research, teaching, policy analysis and development assistance and will draw on the university's existing expertise in areas such as child health, mental health, women's health, and vaccines, as well as the expertise of its affiliates.

Sir Gustav said the university sought to be "a strong international player" and to do that it had to look outwards.

"What is more important than being helpful to developing countries in the health field?" he asked. "What they really want to do is harness the forces of the university to help Third World problems."

Sir Gustav said the university's strengths included its "very strong malaria program", as well as its paediatrics department and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, which focuses on "everything to do with the how, when and where of vaccines".

The university also has research interests in international mental health. "There are very practical things you can do for the mental health of asylum seekers, prisoners and other threatened individuals," said Sir Gustav.

As well as an internal focus on HIV/AIDS within the university, Sir Gustav said that "quite warm hands of friendship have been extended to the Macfarlane Burnet Institute" and he expects "lots of collaborative programs, particularly in the HIV/AIDS field, where they're number one."

Sir Gustav also said that "warm and vibrant things" are forming with the National Centre for Immunisation Research at Westmead's New Children's Hospital in NSW.

Several international service programs undertaken by the Australian International Health Institute (AIHI), a not-for-profit organisation of the university, will be incorporated into the new institute. AIHI "does a lot of work for AusAid", said Sir Gustav, including relief and training programs implemented this year in tsunami-affected Banda Aceh in Indonesia and Galle in Sri Lanka. "[AIHI] will be part of the central core of the institute while retaining a fair degree of independence."

While the Nossal Institute will provide courses that may exercise fees, it won't have a commercial outlook in the first instance. "This is really a humanitarian style endeavour," said Sir Gustav. It is also hoped that the institute will have "a vibrant association with the emerging health decision makers in the developing countries," he said, providing training in Australia as well as sometimes sending trainers abroad.

Work in progress

The university has committed $7.5 million over five years to create the institute, and a "very serious fundraising campaign" should kick off quite soon to raise support from major foundations and the Commonwealth government, said Sir Gustav. "At the moment the institute consists of one scientist and one secretary," he said. "It's a work in progress."

Prof Graham Brown, the university's Head of Medicine at the Royal Melbourne and Western Hospitals has been appointed as the institute's interim director, with the inaugural director expected to be named early in 2006.

In time, the institute will have its own building. But in the meantime, the university has set aside some space for the Nossal Institute in the Alan Gilbert building.

"I would describe it a bit like an embryo," said Sir Gustav. "But it's a little bit like a kangaroo's new born baby. It has independence. It is crawling up to the teat. It has been born and it is actually an existing entity, but what it's going to develop into is going to be very much the work of the next few years."

Sir Gustav said the institute would be more than a 'virtual' one: "It will have an address, it will have a physical premise, it will have a full time director, it will have academic staff, it will have postdoctoral fellows, scholarships, students for people working for degrees."

The institute's first official event was the Nossal Global Health Forum, a two-day international public forum held in December. US epidemiologist and international health expert, Prof Alfred Sommer, gave the inaugural keynote Nossal Global Health Oration in which he called for an aggressive campaign against misleading advertising by fast-food chains. It is expected that this forum will become an annual event.

Thinking global

Sir Gustav said that between the acts of terrorism on September 11, 2001 and the London bombings on July 7, 2005, "the world has become a different place".

"With the natural disasters -- the earthquakes and tsunamis -- plus the threat of the pandemics -- SARS and the possibility of a bird flu -- we have come to realise that it's one world in a stark and new kind of way," he said.

"I for one was not the slightest bit surprised when on July 8, Bob Geldof and Bono had their win and the G8 leaders at Gleneagles did in fact pledge to double official development assistance, overseas aid in other words, over the next 10 years.

"They too have realised that it's one world and the disastrous events in one country in a way threaten us all, because the social injustices are just too great -- they are the things that breed violence."