Philippe Douste-Blazy

Philippe Douste-Blazy (born 1 January 1953) is a French United Nations official and former centre-right politician.

Over the course of his career, he served as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Adviser on Innovative Financing for Development in the UN and chairman of UNITAID.

Born in Lourdes in the Hautes-Pyrénées, Douste-Blazy studied medicine in Toulouse, where he had his first job in 1976.

He then worked as a cardiologist in Lourdes and Toulouse, namely in Purpan's hospital from 1986.

He then joined the French Society of Cardiology.

A cardiologist by profession, he became professor at Toulouse Sciences University in 1988.

He became Professor of Medicine at Toulouse Sciences University in 1988.

He was mayor of Lourdes 1989–2000 and mayor of Toulouse 2001–2004.

Originally a member of the Centre of Social Democrats (CDS), the Christian Democrat component of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) party, he later joined the Union for a Popular Movement.

A member of the Centre of Social Democrats (CDS), the Christian Democrat component of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), Douste-Blazy entered politics in March 1989, being elected mayor of Lourdes.

He was also elected national director of the association of research against elevations of cholesterol.

In the 1989 European elections, Douste-Blazy was elected Member of the European Parliament in June of the same year.

He was then a member of the European People's Party.

During his time in parliament, Douste-Blazy served on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection.

In addition to his committee assignments, he was a member of the parliament’s delegation to the Joint Assembly of the Agreement between the African, Caribbean and Pacific States (ACP countries) and the European Economic Community.

It turned out that the Minister's assailant was an Albanian refugee who had already tried to attack Mr Douste-Blazy in 1992.

At the head of the centrist parliamentary group, he was often opposed to the UDF party leader François Bayrou.

Indeed, while the latter advocated the emancipation of the UDF towards its Gaullist allies, Douste-Blazy proposed the union of the right-wing parties behind President Chirac.

He previously served as French Minister for Health (1993–1995 and 2004–2005), Minister of Culture (1995–1997) and as Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Dominique de Villepin (2005–2007).

Elected deputy for Hautes-Pyrénées département in March 1993, Douste-Blazy was appointed to the cabinet of Edouard Balladur as Minister-Delegate (a junior minister) at the Ministry for Health.

In May 1994, in his capacity as minister, Douste-Blazy visited Rwanda and refugee camps in neighboring Tanzania to witness the consequences of the genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi by members of Rwanda’s Hutu majority government.

During his time in office, France approved a bill which prohibited postmenopausal pregnancy, which Douste-Blazy said was "...immoral as well as dangerous to the health of mother and child."

In March 1994, he was elected at Hautes-Pyrénées's General Council.

He became general secretary of the CDS in December and Government's spokesman one month later.

Douste-Blazy stayed at the ministry until the 1995 presidential election.

In May 1995, after the election of Jacques Chirac as President of France, a candidacy he was backing, Douste-Blazy was nominated Minister of Culture.

In June, he was also re-elected Mayor of Lourdes then, five months later, elected general secretary of Democratic Force, the party which replaced the CDS.

In June 1997, the overwhelming defeat of the Presidential Majority during legislative election made him lose his position as Minister of Culture, but he remained deputy of Hautes-Pyrénées and became president of the UDF parliamentary group at the French National Assembly.

During the election campaign he was badly hurt when a mentally unstable man stabbed him in the back as he was campaigning in Lourdes.

Seeking one of the country's most important municipal seats, Douste-Blazy narrowly won the election for Mayor of Toulouse in 2001, which saw the left making its best showing in decades.

Once in office, he had to deal with a reinvigorated political opposition, as well as with the dramatic explosion of the AZF plant in late 2001.

Douste-Blazy supported Jacques Chirac in the two rounds of the 2002 presidential election, in spite of the candidacy of François Bayrou.

Consequently, he participated to the unification of some right-wing groups in the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and appeared as a possible Prime Minister.

However, once re-elected, President Chirac choose Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Philippe Douste-Blazy refused to resign from its mayoralty to be minister.

The same year, he changed of constituency and was elected deputy for Haute-Garonne département.

His predecessor Jean-François Mattéi was discredited due to his response to the 2003 European heat wave.

He was the instigator of a new reform of medical insurances.

After the electoral crash of the UMP in the 2004 regional election, Douste-Blazy left its function in Toulouse and returned at the Ministry of Health.

In a government reshuffle following the rejection of the European constitution in 29 May 2005's referendum, Douste-Blazy replaced Michel Barnier and became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

Since 2016, he has also been a visiting professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.