Members Mourn Death of Agency Chief Lee Jong-wookWritten by Nancy Steinbach 26 May 2006 I'm Steve Ember with IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.. Health ministers from more than one hund
Trang 1W.H.O Members Mourn Death of Agency Chief Lee Jong-wook
Written by Nancy Steinbach
26 May 2006
I'm Steve Ember with IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English
Health ministers from more than one hundred ninety countries met this week in Geneva to discuss issues like bird flu and other threats But the yearly meeting of the World Health Assembly opened with tragic news Lee Jong-wook, head of the World Health Organization, had died hours before he was supposed to give a speech at the meeting
Doctor Lee suffered a stroke last weekend He died Monday following an operation to remove a blood clot from his brain Doctor Lee, a South Korean, was sixty-one years old
The W.H.O named Assistant Director-General Anders Nordstrom as acting leader Officials say it could take as a long as a year for the organization to choose a new director-general
On Wednesday, more than one thousand people attended funeral services in Geneva for Lee Jong-wook Speakers there and at the fifty-ninth World Health Assembly praised his efforts to improve health conditions around the world
Doctor Lee had worked for twenty-three years for the W.H.O., the United Nations health agency He played a major part in campaigns against tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria and polio He became director-general in two thousand three
One of his major goals was to get treatment to many more people with H.I.V and AIDS in developing countries He worked to make the W.H.O more effective in dealing with infectious diseases
The agency says his work has made the world better prepared for the possible spread of avian flu One example is an agreement last year among W.H.O members to develop a fast reporting system for suspected cases
More than two hundred cases have been confirmed in ten countries since two thousand three These have resulted in more than one hundred twenty deaths
Most of the cases are believed to have been caused directly by contact with infected birds or their waste
But as world health ministers were meeting in Geneva, medical teams were investigating an unusual situation in northern Indonesia At least six members of a family died from the h-five-n-one virus in the past month
The W.H.O sent experts to North Sumatra to investigate The agency said all the cases can be directly linked to close and extended periods of contact with a patient
Julie Gerberding heads the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention She said in Geneva that experts believed the disease spread among family members caring for others who were sick
Lee Jong-wook
Trang 2Early reports suggested that three of the people had spent a night in a small room with the woman who had the first case in the family
Officials say tests on the victims found no evidence that the virus had changed in ways that would let
it spread easily from person-to-person
IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English was written by Nancy Steinbach Read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com I’m Steve Ember