PHA-Exchange> The Lancet Launches Coverage of Race to Succeed Brundtland

[Aviva]

> Source: UNWire http://www.unwire.org/
>
 The Lancet has begun special coverage on
> the election of the successor to World Health Organization Director
> General Gro Harlem Brundtland, saying "few would dispute"
> Brundtland's "indelible mark" on global health and adding that her
> work is still very much in progress and requires "a strong and capa-
> ble successor." The Lancet's coverage of the issue will continue over
> the next few months.
>
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol361/iss9351/full/llan.361.9351.who_direc
tor_general_election.23884.1
>
> Brundtland unexpectedly announced in August that she would not seek a
> second term, a surprise even to her closest colleagues at WHO head-
> quarters in Geneva (The Lancet, Jan. 4).
> http://www.who.int/mediacentre/releases/who65/en/print.html
>
> Various candidates vying for this position have been featured in The
> Lancet. Click
>
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol361/iss9351/full/llan.361.9351.who_direc
tor_general_election.23876.1
> to read the platform of the head of the WHO's tuberculosis program,
> Jong-Wook Lee of South Korea, and click
>
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol361/iss9351/full/llan.361.9351.who_direc
tor_general_election.23878.1
> to read Mozambican Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi's views on improv-
> ing global health and the WHO's increasing role in this process.
>
> In an interview with National Public Radio's All Things Considered
> yesterday, Brundtland described her philosophy of governing the WHO:
> "The World Health Organization has to try to be the center of excel-
> lence, to try to be the objective source of the best information and
> the best practices, and that's what... we try to do to support coun-
> tries," she said. "I have been a much stronger political advocate for
> health than those who went before me. It's not the higher you shout,
> the more effective you are; the question is, are you able to move
> forward the forces that decide what happens."
>
> "I managed to bring health onto the political agenda and have a sec-
> retary general of the United Nations who, much more than anytime be-
> fore, has taken AIDS health issues as part of his central agenda,"
> Brundtland said. She added, "I will be 69 after five more years and I
> frankly think being 69 is too high an age to keep the level of energy
> and intensity" (Brenda Wilson, NPR All Things Considered, Jan. 6).