Former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, elected recently as director general of the World Health Organization, is the first woman to lead the troubled agency.
Brundtland, a 58-year-old physician who served three times as Norway’s prime minister, is to succeed Hiroshi Nakajima of Japan. Nakajima’s stormy 10-year tenure was marked by accusations that he traded favors for votes in his re-election campaign five years ago and that he packed the top echelons of the Geneva-based agency with cronies who contributed to its mismanagement.
Brundtland, who was elected to a five-year term, pledged to restore credibility to the UN health agency. “The first thing I’m going to do is to start with internal reform,” she said.
Responding to questions at a news conference at the Palais des Nations, Brundtland, long regarded as the front-runner and favored by Western countries, said the secret balloting to choose among the five candidates “took more time than we expected.”
She said the balloting by the WHO executive body had taken three rounds. “On the third round, 18 out of 32 voted for me,” she said.
The executive body is made up of 32 of the agency’s 191 member countries on a rotating basis. It takes at least 17 votes to elect a director general.
Asked how it felt to be the first woman to head the 50-year-old agency, Brundtland joked that when she was elected Norway’s prime minister, “I was the first woman in 1,000 years.” She added, “Things are evolving gradually.” Brundtland bristled when asked later in an interview whether the process to select WHO’s head had become too openly political.
“I don’t know how you can even ask that question,” she said. “I have only discussed health issues,” during the trips she took to member countries. Trained as a physician in Norway with a public-health degree from Harvard University, Brundtland made her name as a politician and an environmental leader. She declared recently that she was out of Norwegian politics for good and was completely committed to her new job.
Her election by the executive body is subject to approval by the World Health Assembly, which all member countries attend, set for mid-May, but that is considered a formality. She would not actually begin her new post until Nakajima, 70, steps down in late July.
