WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, GENEVA
WHO Management Reorganization
On 9 March WHO announced changes involving several senior managers, effective 13 March. Yasuhiro Suzuki, M.D., current Executive Director of the Social Change and Mental Health Cluster, was moved to head the Health Technology and Pharmaceuticals Cluster. The Social Change and Mental Health Cluster was merged with the Noncommunicable Diseases Cluster, under a new Executive Director, Derek Yach, M.D. Dr. Yachs previous position was Programme Manager for the Tobacco Free Initiative.
WHO Executive Board
The 105th session of the Executive Board of WHO was held in January 2000. Stanislas Flache, M.D., WFMHs resident representative to UN and WHO in Geneva, attended on behalf of the Federation and provided a report to the Secretariat.
WHOs Director General, Gro Harlem Brundtland, M.D., made a statement to the Executive Board on 24 January defining the organizations priorities (Towards a strategic agenda for the WHO Secretariat). Major goals include strengthening health systems; fighting malaria, HIV/AIDS and TB; combatting use of tobacco; promoting maternal health; focusing on cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases; and giving attention to food safety. Two new priorities were added to the list – safe blood supplies, and mental health.
Dr. Brundtland called mental illness a major, often forgotten contributor to the growing global disease burden. She announced that mental health would be the theme of the World Health Report for 2001, and that it would also be the theme of WHOs World Health Day next year: The case for this is strong: five out of 10 leading causes of disability worldwide are mental problems. Major depression ranks fifth in the 10 leading causes of the global disease burden. By 2020 it will have jumped to second place according to the projections. She noted that she had introduced a new strategy in this field in a speech in Beijing last November, and that WHO would work to improve mental health care, fortify community support, train mental health personnel and improve access to efficient essential drugs.
During the January meeting the Director-General also drew attention to the links between poverty and health, and the relevance of health care to overall economic development. WHO has launched a Commission on Macroeconomics and Health to examine these issues with representatives from other agencies, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.