Geneva (AsiaNews) – Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun has been elected World Health Organisation  (WHO) director-general after four rounds of voting. She has yet to be accepted by the assembly of its members.

Chan, 59, will be the first Chinese person to head a UN organization and the first from Hong Kong too. She was formerly director of health services in the ex-British colony.

Considerable backing from the People's Republic of China has contributed in no small way to her victory. China has been lobbying for her in different meetings for some time, including the recent Sino-African summit. But support from the United States has helped too. Only yesterday, China's Foreign Affairs Minister Li Zhaoxing publicly thanked Washington for backing Chan. WHO officials in Geneva told AsiaNews that American backing for Chan's candidature was part of the realization of "international policy through health." They said: "What cannot be obtained through political channels is obtained through health channels. By backing Chan, the United States wants to show its appreciation of China, perhaps in its anti-Putin capacity. At the same time, it is trying to make Beijing more responsible about health matters after the SARS crisis and bird flu."

In Hong Kong, many sing Chan's praises but others are highly critical of her. The former director of health was said to be very prepared and decisive in tackling the bird flu crisis, isolating at risk areas and obliging Hong Kong breeders and importers to eliminate millions of infected animals coming from China. But it was not so with SARS: many have accused her of protecting the Chinese authorities that kept quiet until the crisis assumed international proportions. SARS exploded in Guangdong in November 2002, infecting Hong Kong, but the Chinese authorities denied the existence of an epidemic until April 2003, thus allowing the virus to spread in more than 30 nations, leading to the death of more than 700 people (299 in Hong Kong) and infecting more than 8,000.

Yesterday Margaret Chan pledged to "work tirelessly with my eyes on the goals we agree on together, my ears open to voices of all, and my heart committed to the populations of our countries".

With a Chinese candidate taking the post of WHO director-general, Taiwan risks losing all chances of having a seat in the organization under the name 'Taiwan Health Entity'. But China's ambassador to the UN in Geneva that with Chan, although she is Chinese, co-operation between Taiwan and the world body would be "better and more favourable".