SWITZERLAND: The World Health Organisation's (WHO) Executive Board today nominated China's Margaret Chan as its new chief

The World Health Organisation's (WHO) 193 member countries on Thursday (November 9) elected bird flu expert Margaret Chan of China to lead the United Nations agency tasked with preventing and fighting global health threats. Chan, 59, was nominated on Wednesday (November 8) by the WHO's executive board to succeed the late Lee Jong-wook as director general. The former Hong Kong health chief overcame contenders from Mexico, Japan, Spain and Kuwait for the top job in international health. As the first Chinese national to head a major UN agency, Chan's election was seen by diplomats as a sign that China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, was interested in playing a wider international role. The profile of the WHO -- which has a two-year budget of $3.3 billion -- has risen dramatically with the spread of AIDS and other diseases, and the emergence of new threats from the respiratory illness SARS and bird flu, which some scientists fear could spark a human pandemic. Chan, most recently the WHO's assistant director-general for communicable diseases, won praise as Hong Kong's health chief for helping douse an earlier bird flu outbreak by ordering the culling of some 1.5 million birds. She also battled SARS, which spread from Asia to other parts of the world in 2002 and 2003. "It is perhaps most opportune that at this stage another woman DG has been elected. Fate must be on our side because we believe that as a woman, you will be more sympathetic to the plight of women in the developing world who continue to bare a disproportionate burden of poverty, under-development and disease," the president of the World Health's Assembly, Paulo Ivo Garrido said. As head of the WHO, a position she can hold for two five-year terms starting in January, Chan will be responsible for staving off a feared bird flu pandemic, fighting chronic and infectious diseases, and improving poor-country health systems. Her term will run from Jan. 4, 2006 until June 30, 2012.

ITN Source | November 10, 2006

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