I have been working with the World Health Organization since 1989 in an effort to redefine approaches to contraceptive introduction. This has given me the opportunity to insist that strategies for research and policy development must simultaneously address people's needs, the capacity of programs to provide good quality of care, and the range of technological options available.

Bureaucratic systems are not set up to be what we refer to as human service organizations. They were established to collect revenue and maintain law and order and they used a law and order approach in providing family planning services.

High level policy makers and program managers do not normally listen to the voices of local people, local providers and local program managers when they make decisions about contraceptive introduction or other aspects of program development in reproductive health.

In fact it is essential that we strengthen efforts to learn from each other, and stop considering public health in the third world and in the U.S. as separate intellectual and practical endeavors.

I would like to see policy makers and international donor agencies realize that it is not enough to give money for demonstration projects. From the very beginning plans should be made for the scaling-up of successful innovations.

If I can give a very substantial injection of humanistic thinking into corporations, boy, that would change things a lot.

It's very important in a leadership role not to place your ego at the foreground and not to judge everything in relationship to how your ego is fed.