Dr Margaret Chan

Director General, World Health Organisation

Date of Birth: 1947

1978, joined Hong Kong Department of Health.

1994, Director, Hong Kong Department of Health.

2003, Director, Department for Protection of the Human Environment, WHO.

June 2005, Director, Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Response and Representative of the Director-General for Pandemic Influenza.

September 2005, Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases.

November 2007, Director-General, WHO.

When World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun took office in 2007, she said, ‘I want us to be judged by the impact we have on the health of the people of Africa and the health of women.’ She has overseen efforts to counter the shortage of medical workers in sub-Saharan Africa by encouraging the development of products that can be administered by non-specialists, and  has promoted the fights against malaria, meningitis and HIV/AIDS.

Born in 1947, Chan earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Northcote College of Education in Hong Kong before moving to Canada. There, she obtained her medical degree at the University of Western Ontario. She also holds a master’s degree in public health from the National University of Singapore.

Chan joined the Hong Kong Health Department in 1978. Her tenure as Director, from 1994, was marked by two near pandemics. In the 1997 outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza, Chan stemmed its progress by culling all 1.5 million of Hong Kong’s chickens. In 2003, she came to global prominence leading Hong Kong’s battle with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

In late 2003, Chan joined the United Nations’ WHO as Director of the Department for Protection of the Human Environment. After the death of South Korea’s Lee Jong-wook in May 2006, Chan became the first Chinese citizen to take a senior UN post. WHO critics called the response to the H1N1 swine flu crisis in 2009 an overreaction that benefited pharmaceutical firms more than the general public. On 10 August, Chan said that the pandemic had ‘run its course’.