【明報專訊】When Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun (陳馮富珍), a former Hong Kong health official, was elected Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO, 世界衛生組織) on 9 November 2006, people in Hong Kong were more bewildered (困惑) than elated (高興). In fact, Chan's performance in carrying out WHO's functions has come under fire.

Margaret Chan's career

Margaret Chan received her medical degree from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Her career in public health began when she joined the Hong Kong Department of Health in 1978. She was appointed Director of Health (衛生署長) in 1994.

In 1997, Margaret Chan ordered the large-scale culling (宰殺) of 1.5 million birds, the entire population of chickens and ducks in the city, after the first case of human infection with the H5N1 influenza virus was reported. The avian flu (禽流感) outbreak was contained, and Margaret Chan was praised for this success.

When the SARS epidemic hit Hong Kong in 2003, Margaret Chan was much criticised for failing to push the Chinese government for details about an outbreak on the mainland. In spite of this, she was offered a job with WHO. She was elected Director-General in 2006 and re-elected in 2012.

◆WHO and its functions

Headquartered in Geneva (日內瓦), WHO is a specialised agency of the United Nations (聯合國) responsible for international public health. As of today it has 194 member states.

WHO issues warnings when it notices that a disease is on the rise. It also coordinates its member states' efforts to deal with global health matters, sets norms and standards (for example, the highest permissible lead level in potable water), and provides countries with technical support and guidance.

It is one of WHO's priorities to tackle communicable diseases (傳染病). As for an influenza pandemic (流感大流行), an epidemic (流行病) of an influenza virus that spreads on a worldwide scale, WHO has a six-phase classification system describing how widespread an influenza virus has become. WHO may recommend travel restrictions if a virus is highly infectious.

◆Case Study: the MERS outbreak in South Korea

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in South Korea earlier this year put WHO's work under the spotlight. WHO officials arrived in the country to assess (評估) the situation there and met with South Korean health officials, trying to determine whether the virus was spreading in the community. They also investigated whether the virus had undergone a mutation (變種), which would have made infections between humans possible.

Despite its work, WHO was faulted for its lack of urgency in dealing with the outbreak. Kwok Ka-ki (郭家麒), a Hong Kong lawmaker who is a doctor, argued that WHO had made a mistake as it had failed to recommend travel restrictions to South Korea. He thought Margeret Chan refrained from doing so out of political considerations. Ho Pak-leung (何�屭}), a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, also said he did not understand WHO's decision. The SAR government followed WHO's recommendations at first, but it eventually issued a warning against travelling to South Korea in the face of public outrage.

In fact, in 2014, after an Ebola epidemic had broken out in West Africa, Margaret Chan argued against imposing restrictions on travel to or from the region, saying they were not justified and might prevent medical experts from entering affected areas. WHO's responses to the Ebola outbreak have come under fire.