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![image: [ New boss at WHO headquarters in Geneva ]](/olmedia/50000/images/_51094_who300.jpg)
The decision has to be ratified by the full WHO Assembly but a rejection of the executive board's preferred candidate would be unprecedented.
Ms Brundtland, 58, was elected on Tuesday by the executive on which 32 of the 191 member states sit.
She will be the first woman to run the agency and takes control at a time when diplomats are calling for its urgent reform.
Ms Brundtland, a qualified medical doctor who was Norway's prime minister three times, will replace Japan's Hiroshi Nakajima.
Mr Nakjima, 70, who steps down in July, has long been accused by Western states of mismanagement, lack of transparency and favouritism in assigning top-level posts.
Ms Brundtland got 18 votes from executive board members, one more than the minimum required.
Sir George Alleyne of Barbados, who heads the agency's Americas region, came second in the vote with 10 votes.
Indonesian Uton Muchtar Rafei, head of the Southeast Asia office, was third with four votes.
Pakistan's Nafis Sadik, who heads the UN Population Fund, and Ebrahim Malick Samba of Gambia, WHO director for Africa, had already dropped out of the race in earlier votes.
Ms Brundtland has a reputation as a strong leader and diplomat and had the backing of Washington which provides a quarter of the WHO's regular budget.
WHO, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, helped to alert the world to the spread of Aids and worked to eradicate polio in the Western hemisphere.
But Western diplomats say it has now sunk into a policy vacuum and could lose the initiative on public health issues.
Ms Brundtland faces the job of putting the agency back on its traditional track of setting normative standards, giving advice on medical matters and advocating changes in health policy.
Profile: Gro Harlem Brundtland, the new WHO head
(27 Jan 98 | World)
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