This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA

Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 1998;279:491.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

GRO HARLEM Brundtland, MD, MPH, a physician and former prime minister of Norway, has been elected director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) and is the first woman to lead the Geneva, Switzerland–based agency. Her election to a 5-year term by the executive body is pending approval by the full World Health Assembly in May, but confirmation is considered essentially a formality.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, MD, MPH, a former prime minister of Norway, has been elected the new director-general of the World Health Organization. (Photo credit: Agence France-Presse)

Brundtland promised to reform the troubled 50-year-old United Nations agency, which has been under fire in recent years during the tenure of the outgoing director-general, Hiroshi Nakajima, MD, PhD, of Japan. Critics charged Nakajima with mismanagement and favoritism for high-level posts and complained that the organization has channeled too much of its budget to central administration and not enough . . . [Full Text of this Article]