Six countries present candidates to lead Pan American Health Organization

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, and Uruguay have presented candidates to lead the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) for the next five years the WHO Regional Office announced Thursday.

The candidates are Camilo Alleyne (Panama), Jarbas Barbosa Da Silva (Brazil), Florence Duperval Guillaume (Haiti), Nadine Flora Gasman Zylbermann (Mexico), and Fernando Ruiz Gómez (Colombia) and Daniel Salinas (Uruguay), the PAHO Executive Committee said in a statement.

The election of the next director will take place by secret ballot during the 30th Pan American Sanitary Conference, which will be held Sept. 26-30.

The candidate who receives most member states’ votes will be appointed for a five-year term and may be re-elected once. He will take office on Feb. 1, 2023.

He will succeed Carissa F. Etienne of Dominica, who served two terms dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic in recent years.

PAHO is celebrating 120 years of health promotion throughout the region this year.

It was founded in 1902 as the International Sanitary Bureau to combat the spread of infectious diseases during the rapid expansion of shipping.

It was renamed the Pan American Sanitary Bureau in 1923 and the Pan American Health Organization in 1958. PAHO is both the World Health Organization (WHO) regional office for the Americas and the specialized health agency of the Inter-American System.