PLOS Blogs’ “Your Say”: Where do the (3) candidates for the next WHO Director General stand on the most challenging global health issues of the decade?
Anne-Emanuelle Birn, professor at the University of Toronto; Yogan Pillay, deputy director general in the South Africa Department of Health (writing in his personal capacity); and Timothy H. Holtz, adjunct associate professor at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, write, “As co-authors of Oxford University Press’s just-published Textbook of Global Health (4th edition), we have drawn from the book’s critical political economy of health framing … to pose a series of direct questions to the three candidates: Dr. Sania Nishtar of Pakistan; Dr. David Nabarro of the United Kingdom; and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia. We present their unedited responses to help [World Health Assembly] members and their constituencies decide which candidate is best placed to lead WHO to fulfill its constitutional mandate to work for the highest attainable level of health for all people — and thus who is most fit for this very important position…” (Costello, 5/4).