Writing in the Financial Times, Simon Kuper describes the creation of Unitaid, an international drugs-purchasing agency which many people have never heard of (briefly, it   has raised $2.2bn to buy medicines for some of the poorest people on earth, largely through a small tax on plane tickets).

Kuper describes the work that went into creating this agency, largely by then French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and quotes him thus:

“Everything is in the detail,” he told me. “Politics taught me that. And medicine too.” [Kuper concludes] Lives are saved not by ideology or personality but by boring details that hardly anyone wants to read about.

 What a wonderful idea for the people in the world who care about details… that by paying attention to them, great things can be achieved.