WHO board nominates China's Chan as new agency chief

GENEVA, Nov 8 (Reuters) The board of the World Health Organisation (WHO) today nominated China's Margaret Chan, a top WHO official, to become the new chief of the United Nations agency, diplomats said.

The 193-state WHO's top decision-taking body, the World Health Assembly, will be asked to approve the choice at a special session tomorrow. The assembly has never rejected the board's candidate.

Chan, who will become the first Chinese to head a major UN agency, had long been the front runner in the race to replace South Korea's Lee Jong-wook who died suddenly last May three years into his five-year term as director-general.

She beat off challenges by Mexico's Health Minister Julio Frenk, Japan's Shigeru Omi, a senior WHO official, Spain's Health Minister Elena Salgado and another top WHO official, Kuwait's Kazem Behbehani in final voting today.

In the final ballot, when it was just down to Chan and Frenk, Chan won 24 of the board votes, said the diplomats who had been following the closed-door session.

The international profile of the WHO, which has a two-year budget of 3.3 billion dollar, has increased dramatically in recent years with the emergence of global health emergencies such as AIDS and threats from new diseases such as SARS and bird flu.

Besides helping prepare for a possible bird flu pandemic, the head of the WHO, who can serve for two five-year terms, must confront tricky political issues.

These include how to balance better access to medicines for poor countries with the drugs' patent protection that big pharmaceuticals companies demand.

Chan, a former director of Hong Kong's department of health nominated by China, has devoted her professional life to public health.

The dimunitive 59-year-old medical doctor has stepped aside from her job as WHO's top official on bird flu and pandemic influenza to campaign hard for director-general.

During nine years as head of health in Hong Kong, she won praise for helping fight the world's first outbreak of bird flu (1997) deciding to cull about 1.5 million poultry.

But she was criticised at home particularly for an alleged failure to get speedy information from mainland China where the disease began. She later battled another new disease, SARS.

REUTERS SSC KP1610