WIKIMEDIA, THORKILD TYLLESKARA new World Health Organization (WHO) director general will take office in July 2017. For now, six candidates are being considered for the role. All six will be speaking at a November WHO forum in Geneva, the agency noted in an October 13 update. In January, the WHO’s executive board will name a short list of no more than five candidates that the agency is eyeing for the vacancy left by current Director General Margaret Chan, who will step down next year after having held the position since 2007.
The Lancet spoke with the six current candidates, asking each to name current priorities in public health and describe how they would tackle today’s most pressing challenges. “The forthcoming election of the next director general of WHO comes at a critical moment not only for the world’s only multilateral health agency but also for the precarious trajectory of global health itself,” Lancet editors Richard Horton and Udani Samarasekera wrote. “The director general has an essential voice in shaping the meaning of health in an era of human dislocation, pervasive inequality, mass migration, ecological degradation, climate change, war, and humanitarian crisis.”
