Maputo — Mozambican Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi has made it through to the final phase of the election of the next general director of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

According to a release from the Mozambican government's press office (GABINFO), Mocumbi and four others were chosen at a WHO meeting that began on Monday.

The others who have passed into the final stage are the Belgian Peter Piot, who heads the UNAIDS programme, the South Korean Jong Woo Ook, who heads the WHO programme against tuberculosis, the Mexican health minister Julio Frank Mora, and the former Egyptian health minister, Ismaial Salam.

Two candidates were rejected - the former Lebanese minister of tourism and health, Karam Karam, and the former health minister of the Cook Islands, Joseph Williams.

The WHO Executive Committee, on which 32 countries sit, will meet next Monday, 27 January, to select from among the five candidates the person who will succeed Gro Harlem Brundtland at the helm of WHO.