Margaret Chan

Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, OBE (, born 1947 in Hong Kong) is the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). Chan was elected by the Executive Board of the WHO on 8 November 2006, and was endorsed in a special meeting of the World Health Assembly on the following day. Chan has previously served as Director of Health in the Hong Kong Government (1994-2003), representative of the WHO Director-General for Pandemic Influenza and WHO Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases (2003-2006).

Qualifications
Margaret Chan was initially trained as a Home Economics teacher at the Northcote College of Education. She then earned her Bachelor of Arts in Home Economics and her M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree at the University of Western Ontario in 1973 and 1977, respectively, as well as her Master's degree of Public Health at the National University of Singapore. She also attended Harvard University Business School in 1991 to study management development. In 1997, she was given the distinction for the Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom and was also awarded the OBE by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

She joined the Hong Kong Government in December 1978 as a Medical Officer. In November 1989, she was promoted to Assistant Director of the Department of Health. In April 1992, she was promoted to Deputy Director and, in June 1994, was named the first female in Hong Kong to head the Department of Health. She left the Hong Kong Government in August 2003 after 25 years of service to join the World Health Organization.

As Hong Kong Director of Health
Her profile was raised by her handling, in those positions, of the 1997 H5N1 avian influenza outbreak and the 2003 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong. After the first victim of the H5N1, Chan first tried to reassure the Hong Kong people with her infamous statements like, "I ate chicken last night" or "I eat chicken every day, don't panic, everyone". When many more H5N1 cases appeared, she was criticised for misleading the public. In the end, she was credited for help bringing the epidemic under control by the slaughtering of 1.5 million chickens in the region in the face of stiff political opposition.

Her performance during the SARS outbreak, which ultimately led to 299 deaths, attracted harsh criticism from the Legislative Council of Hong Kong and many SARS victims and their relatives. She was criticised by the Legislative Council for believing in misleading information shared by the mainland authority and did not act swiftly. On the other hand, the SARS expert committee established by the Hong Kong Government to assess its handling of the crisis, opined that the failure was not Chan's fault, but due to the structure of Hong Kong's health care system, in which the separation of the hospital authority from the public health authority resulted in problems with data sharing.

Her track record in SARS handling led to some concerns in Hong Kong about her ability to lead the WHO.

As Director-General elect of WHO
Dr Chan considers the "improvements in the health of the people of Africa and the health of women" to be the key performance indicator of WHO and she wants to focus WHO's attention on "the people in greatest need."

In February 2007, Chan provoked the anger of humanitarian and civil society groups by questioning the quality of generic medicines whilst on a visit to Thailand.."