Her quick smile and perky manner make Margaret Chan (
But the Hong Kong physician has fought some major medical battles in the past three decades, and she's now a serious candidate to become the next boss of WHO.
She has a good shot at winning because her candidacy is being sponsored by China. It's the first time China has nominated anyone for a top UN job, indicating the massive nation's interest in playing a bigger role in global affairs.
But questions are already being raised about whether Chan would be able to stand up to her patrons in Beijing if the government again fails to cooperate in fighting a disease outbreak.
Beijing was widely accused of trying to conceal SARS in 2003, helping the often deadly virus to spread worldwide.
"If Dr Chan cannot stand firm, because she's a Chinese national, she may not have the guts enough to react to the Beijing government. If a similar SARS incident happens in the future, the whole world would be in a crisis,'' said Andrew Cheng (
Chan recently told journalists that she wouldn't be soft on China.
"If elected, I'm not serving Hong Kong's interests. I'm not serving China's interests. I'm serving the world's interests. That's a very important message to get clear," she said.
Chan insisted that China has learned from SARS, and commended its openness in combatting bird flu. She said lapses in reporting bird flu cases mostly happened at the village level, where people have struggled to confirm infections.
"China is prepared to act and play its role as a major country," she said. "And one of the reasons for nominating me as a candidate for the post is because they would like to make a greater contribution to global public health."
But Thomas Abraham, author of Twenty-first Century Plague: The Story of SARS, said China still lacks transparency.
"It's not an open system yet, and I think they have a long way to go. Information about disease is still something that you can only publish if it's officially announced," said Abraham, a journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong.
So far, Chan's main rival in the race for the WHO's director is Japan's Shigeru Omi, the WHO's director for the Western Pacific.
Chan, who earned her medical degree from the University of Western Ontario in Canada, joined the Hong Kong Department of Health in 1978 and has spent most of her career in administration.
Perhaps her biggest strong point is that she's one of the few health officials in the world with experience fighting two outbreaks of new and deadly diseases: bird flu in 1997 and SARS in 2003. Most recently, she was WHO's point person for bird flu as an assistant director-general for the WHO.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
RSS