[Ip-health] Turkish Weekly: Turkey nominates Turmen for WHO's next director-general

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=36852#


Turkey nominates Turmen for WHO's next director-general

Thursday , 17 August 2006

Turkey is nominating a senior World Health Organization official as a
candidate to be the United Nations
health agency's director-general, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Turkey is backing Tomris Turmen, a 62-year-old WHO executive director
for family and community health, for the post, a ministry statement said.

A formal application was to be made in Geneva Wednesday, it said.

The WHO is scheduled to elect a new director-general in November to
replace South Korea's Lee Jong-wook, who died suddenly in May at age 61.

The ministry statement said Turmen was "able to display a global
approach ... to problems at a time when health problems have reached new
and complex heights."

"Turkey believes that it is contributing to making the World Health
Organization more effective," it said.

Other candidates who will be contesting the post include former Hong
Kong health chief Margaret Chan and Japan's Shigeru Omi, who has been
the WHO's director for the Western Pacific.

Turmen, a pediatrician who trained in Turkey, the United States and
Canada, is a former deputy undersecretary of health and was also in
charge of maternal and child care and family planning in the Health
Ministry.

She has held various senior positions in WHO since 1992, including
policy adviser to the director-general, and was appointed executive
director in 2000.

17 August 2006, The New Anatolian