The Argentine government on Monday formally congratulated China's Margaret Chan on her appointment as head of the World Health Organization (WHO).

 

"We wish Dr. Chan the best of luck as head of the WHO," the Argentine Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

 

The government would support Chan with all its efforts so that she could achieve all her objectives, it added.

 

The WHO on Wednesday nominated Chan, former health chief of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, as the next director-general to succeed Dr. Lee Jong-wook of South Korea who died suddenly in May.

 

She was elected without opposition with 150 votes in favor, well over the two-thirds majority needed, at a special session of the agency's governing World Health Assembly in Geneva Thursday.

 

Chan, 59, joined the WHO in 2003 and has since been the agency's top official for pandemic influenza, as well as the assistant director-general for communicable diseases.

 

Chan will take office in January 2007 for a five-year term. She is the first Chinese national ever elected to head the 193-member world health body, which was created in 1948 with the objective of helping all peoples attain the highest possible level of health.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 14, 2006)