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Fernando Antezana drops out of WHO leadership race

Dr Fernando Antezana has dropped out of the race for the post of director general of the World Health Organisation. The announcement came as an American television documentary claimed that Dr Antezana had lied about his qualifications on his resumé.

The investigative programme 60 Minutes, on the American television channel CBS, found that the Bolivian university from which Dr Antezana had claimed to have a doctorate does not give out doctorates. Dr Antezana also claimed to have diplomas in public health and international relations from Harvard University when he had only completed a one year fellowship at Harvard. He further claimed to have a degree from Stanford University in California, whereas he had attended a university in Peru founded by Stanford professors but which had no affiliation with Stanford University.

Dr Antezana did not deny these allegations when confronted on camera but defended himself by saying that it is customary in Bolivia to refer to all professionals as doctors.

Dr Antezana was not considered to be a strong contender for the leadership race but he had been promoted three times by Dr Hiroshi Nakajima to become deputy director general of the WHO. The WHO declined to make any comment about the television programme.

Five candidates have now been shortlisted for the post of director general. They are George Alleyne, Gro Harlem Bruntland, Nafis Sadik, Ebrahim Samba, and Uton Muchtar Rafei. They will each make an hour long presentation on 26 January before taking questions from the 32 members of the executive board. A decision will be announced on 27 January. This nomination must then be ratified in May by the WHO's governing body, the World Health Assembly, on which all 191 member states have a vote. However, the board's nominee has never yet been turned down by the assembly.

If the votes cast on the BMJ's website are anything to go by, the leading contenders are Dr Brundtland from Norway and Dr Uton from Indonesia. As the BMJ went to press Dr Brundtland had 416 votes and Dr Uton had 329. The director of the WHO's American region, George Alleyne, polled 133 votes.

Obviously these votes reflect the readership of the BMJ and are further biased towards those readers who have access to the internet. This might explain why Dr Samba from the Gambia polled just 24 votes and Dr Sadik only 34.

In fact, some readers were so keen to see their favoured candidate come out on top that they voted repeatedly for the same candidate. Within a short space of time after voting initially opened on 2 January Dr Uton had 2018 votes, while most of the other candidates were still in single figures. Many votes were discovered to have come from the same computer and as a result the vote had to be restarted on 6 January. It is now not possible to vote more than once from the same computer.

The vote from BMJ readers aside, Dr Uton is a strong contender. He has been director of the WHO's South East Asia region since 1994 and has widespread support in and beyond Asia. Japan in particular is likely to put its powerful influence behind him. Two other strong candidates, Dr Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway, and Dr Nafis Sadik, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, would offer greater chance of reform, however.

The final result will be posted on 27 January to the BMJ's website at www.bmj.com.

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