Medical Journal Launches Coverage of Race to Succeed Brundtland
---------------------------------------------------------------
Source: UNWire http://www.unwire.org/
The British medical journal 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_director_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_director_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_director_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).
--
To send a message to AFRO-NETS, write to: afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe, write to: majordomo@usa.healthnet.org
in the body of the message type: subscribe afro-nets OR unsubscribe afro-nets
To contact a person, send a message to: afro-nets-help@usa.healthnet.org
Information and archives: http://www.afronets.org