Minister meets WHO Director-General
26 February 2015. Today, Federal Minister of Health Hermann Gröhe met with WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan in Berlin. In the course of their meeting, they discussed the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the important polio vaccine for children, as well as the rising spread of antibiotic resistance worldwide.
The Federal Minister of Health and Dr Chan agreed that joint international collaboration across all sectors is necessary in fighting both the Ebola epidemic and antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics play an important role in medicine. They save lives and have led over time to an increase in life expectancy. A vaccine against polio continues to be necessary so as to avoid further epidemics. In 2006, Dr Chan was elected to the post of Director-General of WHO. In September 2005, she had been appointed Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases. Prior to this she had held the posts of Director, Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Response, as well as Representative of the Director-General for Pandemic Influenza. Her current term, as Director-General of WHO, will end in 2017.