Nine candidates nominated for top WHO post

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7375.1259

BMJ 2002;325:1259 ( 30 November )

News

Nine candidates nominated for top WHO post

Fiona Fleck, Geneva
The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In the race for the world's top health post $---$ director general of the World Health Organization $---$ the two front runners are fromAfrica andMexico.

WHO unveiled a list of nine candidates, seven of them from developing countries, for the role of director general of the UnitedNations agency from July next year, when the present incumbent,Gro Harlem Brundtland,retires.

Insiders say it is unlikely that the present director general, a former prime minister of Norway, will be succeeded by anothercandidate from the developedworld.

That would effectively rule out the Belgian epidemiologist and microbiologist Peter Piot, who heads UNAIDS (the joint UN programmeon HIV and AIDS). Piot, 53, originally made his name as one ofthe doctors who helped isolate the Ebola virus after conductingfieldwork in Zaire in1976.

Later, as a professor of microbiology at the Institute of Tropical Research in Antwerp, Belgium, Dr Piot . . . [Full text of this article]