The World Health Organisation’s 50 European member states have nominated their regional director for the next five years. Dr Marc Danzon, whose background is in public health and health administration, won a decisive—and, to some people, surprising—victory over other strong candidates in an election at the European regional committee’s meeting in Florence, Italy, last week.
Dr Danzon, a 52 year old Frenchman, will take office at the regional headquarters in Copenhagen after his nomination is confirmed by WHO’s executive board in January.
A medical doctor, Dr Danzon is currently director in public health of France’s national federation of mutual insurance societies, a non-profit organisation in Paris providing supplementary health insurance cover for 35 million people. He has worked for WHO’s European region before, once in the late 1980s and again in the early 1990s, when he set up health development programmes for member states in central and eastern Europe. Between these posts he returned to France, where he directed the French health education committee.
Dr Danzon is regarded as likeable but tough, and his inside knowledge of WHO is seen as a strong asset. “He’s got guts,” says Dr Derek Yach of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative. Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, welcomed his broad experience. “He has the ability to bring together a range of different perspectives.”
How member states voted remains confidential, but it is known that Dr Danzon had a strong majority. In contrast, Germany’s preferred candidate, Dr Ilona Kickbusch, currently at Yale University and a former programme director at WHO’s Geneva headquarters, got fewer votes than expected.
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Dr Marc Danzon, WHO”S new director for Europe