[Ip-health] Financial Times: Frontrunner to head WHO outlines reform

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/43f47eee-30b1-11db-9156-0000779e2340.html

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Julio Frenk, Mexico's health minister, kicked off his race to lead the
World Health Organisation by declaring that the United Nations agency
should demonstrate greater accountability and focus on developing world
diseases.

Mr Frenk is seen as a frontrunner in November elections triggered by the
sudden death of Lee Jong-wook in May. Credited with significantly
expanding Mexico's healthcare system, he made his call in a manifesto
circulated at the international Aids conference in Toronto last week.

But he faces up to a dozen rivals including two WHO top officials,
Shigeru Omi of Japan and Margaret Chan of China, as well as Pekka Puska,
director of Finland's National Public Health Institute.



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    Frontrunner to head WHO outlines reform

By Andrew Jack in Toronto

Published: August 21 2006 03:00 | Last updated: August 21 2006 03:00

Julio Frenk, Mexico's health minister, kicked off his race to lead the
World Health Organisation by declaring that the United Nations agency
should demonstrate greater accountability and focus on developing world
diseases.

Mr Frenk is seen as a frontrunner in November elections triggered by the
sudden death of Lee Jong-wook in May. Credited with significantly
expanding Mexico's healthcare system, he made his call in a manifesto
circulated at the international Aids conference in Toronto last week.

But he faces up to a dozen rivals including two WHO top officials,
Shigeru Omi of Japan and Margaret Chan of China, as well as Pekka Puska,
director of Finland's National Public Health Institute.

The vote by the WHO's 34-strong executive board, and another also in
early November for a new executive director of the UN-backed Global Fund
to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, will be fundamental in
determining the direction of international health policy.

The new incumbents will face important challenges, with sharply rising
funding needs for HIV/Aids, the threat of avian influenza, pressure to
do more about obesity and smoking, and UN objectives to cut child
mortality, infectious disease deaths and to boost maternal health by 2015.

Mr Frenk suggested the WHO should be a model for the reform of the UN
and added the director-general should maintain "a tight and accountable
management".

But he played down any idea of abolishing the WHO's unwieldy regional
structure, which critics argue offers too much autonomy over
appointments and funding to regional directors.

He said he would instead institute a global health council to bring
together the regional heads of the organisation, motivating them with a
mixture of leadership and financial incentives.

Separately, about 100 candidates have applied to headhunters drawing up
a 10-person shortlist for interviews by the board of the Global Fund,
which is trying to appoint a strong manager to spend and add to its
$10bn (=807.6bn, =A35.3bn) war chest.

Copyright <http://www.ft.com/servicestools/help/copyright> The Financial
Times Limited 2006