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In a surprise decision, the World Health Organization has chosen Jong Wook Lee, a South Korean public health specialist to be its new boss. Lee, 57, is currently head of the WHO鈥檚 Stop TB programme.

The election followed the equally unexpected announcement in 2002 by the WHO鈥檚 current director general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, that she would not seek re-election.

The choice of Lee could be the start of a new era of measurable and more narrowly-defined targets for the WHO, focused primarily on poor countries. Such a shift would reflect long-standing criticism that the WHO spreads its resources too thinly.

In the lead up to the election, Lee stated his backing for the list of Millennium Development Goals agreed by world leaders at the UN in 2000. The goals, for 2015, include halting the spread of HIV, reducing the incidence of malaria, halving the number of people with no safe drinking water and providing access to 鈥渁ffordable essential drugs鈥�, in cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry.

Lee also called for further decentralisation of the WHO, another perennial complaint of major donors. He plans, for example, to move the office for fighting leprosy from Geneva to India, where most leprosy actually occurs.

Narrow win

Lee鈥檚 election by the 32 nations that sit on the WHO鈥檚 executive board must be ratified by all WHO member countries in May, but this is likely. He narrowly beat Peter Piot, the Belgian who runs the UNAIDS programme. Both made it to a final round of voting ahead of the early front-runners 鈥� Pascoal Mocumbi, the Prime Minister of Mozambique, and Julio Frenk Mora, the Mexican health minister.

A look at the candidate鈥檚 statements made in the medical journal The Lancet in January may reveal why. Mocumbi and Frenk both refer to the goal of Health For All, a catch-phrase associated with an ambitious 1980s WHO plan to provide basic health care to all the world鈥檚 people by 2000. But, say critics, this was also an era in which the WHO had over a dozen 鈥渢op priorities鈥� covering virtually the entire spectrum of health and disease.

Lee, in contrast, linked himself firmly with the Millennium Development Goals, and called for clear deadlines in 2005 and 2010 for achieving measurable health benefits in a few, well-defined areas. This could mean the WHO scaling down its work in areas such as tobacco, violence, nutrition and mental health.

Lee鈥檚 emphasis matches that of an analysis of the WHO made in September 2002 by the UK鈥檚 Department for International Development, a government agency. The UK is the third-largest donor to the WHO鈥檚 鈥渆xtrabudgetary funds鈥�, which make up more than half its funding and are donated over and above a nation鈥檚 mandatory dues.