Guns Out For WHO's Nakajima

News that World Health Organization Director General Hiroshi Nakajimawill not stand for a third term in office will be music to the ears of certain sections of the international community and press, which have frequently criticized both the man and his method of operation.

On a mild note, the Financial Times says that whoever follows Dr Nakajima "faces a difficult task of restoring staff morale and putting the organization on course to face the challenges of the 21st century." Moreover, it adds, the WHO "lacks a coherent vision of its future role in promoting global health and its unwieldy bureaucracy remains largely intact."

With the headline "Good Riddance," The Washington Post is much more scathing. An editorial says: "it is hard to think of any single person in the United Nations constellation who has done more harm to the effectiveness and reputation" of the WHO than Dr Nakajima. The WHO has "suffered a crisis of public confidence" in recent years, and Dr Nakajima, a pharmacologist first elected in 1988, "is one of the proximate causes. He has outraged legions of professionals in almost all of the regions around the world by his intrusive and arbitrary management style." The "truly dismal thing," the WP notes, "is not so much the man as his sponsors. He is Japanese, and the Japanese government supported him faithfully, largely it seems, for reasons of national chauvinism."