UN's Health Agency Names Five Finalists for Top Job (Update2)

By Warren Giles

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The World Health Organization named five finalists
for its next director general, a post overseeing the global fight against
AIDS, bird flu and malaria. The new head will be chosen Nov. 8, the agency
said on its Web site.

The candidates are Julio Frenk, who worked to create a universal health
insurance program in Mexico; Shigeru Omi of Japan, WHO's current director
for the Western Pacific; Margaret Chan of China, now on leave from her
position as head of WHO's communicable diseases section and pandemic
planning; Kazem Behbehani, a Kuwaiti national, and Elena Salgado Mendez of
Spain.

The agency is leading an international effort to prevent a worldwide
outbreak of lethal flu as a strain of influenza, known as H5N1, is
spreading in birds and has killed at least 151 people in 10 countries. If
the virus adapts to spread more widely among humans, it may kill millions
more, the WHO has warned. Also on the agency's agenda are campaigns to cut
HIV/AIDS infections, heart disease, malaria and obesity.

``There's a fair amount of interest in this election,'' said Georges
Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, in
an interview at the group's annual meeting in Boston today. ``There are
lots of new players on the stage of global health, like Bill Gates, and we
have corporations that are outsourcing more and have to start paying
attention to what's going on.''

Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corp., has donated money for AIDS treatment
and other causes through the $29-billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
which gained an additional $30.7 billion with a commitment in June from
Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett.

Secret Ballot

Thirty-four governments sitting on the World Health Organization's
executive board tomorrow will decide through a secret ballot to refer one
person to representatives of 193 member states to either ratify or reject,
the WHO said in its statement on the Web site.

The UN agency's previous director, Lee Jong Wook, a South Korean physician,
died in May from a brain hemorrhage. Lee had led the organization since
2003.

Lee's successor will inherit an agency that has to defend a tobacco treaty
in force since last year that aims to cut the 1 billion smoking-related
deaths predicted this century.

Frenk's Candidacy

Frenk, 52, is the only contender for the agency's top job with a high level
of experience in global health, policy-making and health-system management
in a low- to middle-income country, the medical journal Lancet said in an
editorial Oct. 6.

Critics from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an anti- tobacco group in
Washington, have said that a deal with two cigarette makers on taxes in
return for $400 million for social programs may hurt Frenk's candidacy.

``This thing aside, he's been viewed as a strong antitobacco advocate,''
Benjamin said. ``He understands the social determinants of health.''

Behbehani, the only candidate from the Middle East, is a specialist in
infectious diseases and has worked at the WHO for 16 years. Dealing with
such communicable illnesses will play an increasingly important role in the
agency's work, he said.

``We have seen that diseases have no borders,'' Behbehani said in an
interview last week in London. ``You have to look at what we have not seen
yet.''

Today's shortlist was drawn from 11 candidates, which included former
French health minister and co-founder of global aid group Doctors Without
Borders, Bernard Kouchner.

To contact the reporter on this story: Warren Giles in Geneva at
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Last Updated: November 6, 2006 17:35 EST

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