Electing WHO's next leader

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7375.1251

BMJ 2002;325:1251-1252 ( 30 November )

Editorials

Electing WHO's next leader

The process is a secretive game of political favours that excludes the public

See also Education and debate p 1294 and News p 1259

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland promised greater transparency when she took charge of the World Health Organization in 1998.¹The secretive bureaucracy that she inherited would be banished,along with the memory of her ill perceived predecessor, HiroshiNakajima. Despite her best efforts, successes have not arrivedin legions.² United Nations organisations change directionwith reluctance. Little wonder that Brundtland has relinquisheda second term as directorgeneral.

Nowhere will this inertia be more disturbing than in the selection of her successor from the 9 hopefuls who announced theircandidacy last week (p 1259).³ WHO considers itself to be theworld's ministry of health, and as such the world's six billioninhabitants, particularly those in low income countries, deservebetter than seeing their "health minister" elected by a secretpublicly unaccountable ballot of 32 faceless bureaucrats at nextJanuary's meeting of WHO's executive board. This powerful groupis drawn from WHO's 192 member . . . [Full text of this article]