China has decided to recommend Margaret Chan, a Hong Kong-born public health official, as the next head of the World Health Organization (WHO), state media said Tuesday.
Chan, now an assistant director general at the WHO, has shown "systematic and mature thinking" about the UN agency's development, foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said, according to Xinhua news agency.
"We believe Madam Margaret Chan would help the organization play a more active role in the health sector on the world stage if she were elected WHO director general," Liu was quoted as saying.
The new head of the WHO will be elected by its 192 member states on November 9.
A streamlined election procedure was approved by the WHO's executive board of 34 member states to fill the post following the sudden death of director general Lee Jong-Wook on May 22.
Chan obtained her medical degree from the University of Western Ontario in Canada and subsequently joined the Hong Kong Department of Health in 1978, the WHO said on its website.
In 1994, she was appointed to director of health of Hong Kong, a position she held until joining the WHO in 2003.
During her tenure as Hong Kong's health chief, the city dealt with the world's first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus as well as an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
