INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL BOARD RE-ELECTS DR. EMAFO OF NIGERIA AS PRESIDENT

(Reissued as received.)

VIENNA, 27 May (UN Information Service) -- Dr. Philip O. Emafo, an international drug control expert from Nigeria, has been re-elected President of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) at its seventy-seventh session in Vienna (26 May-6 June).  Dr. Emafo was first elected President of the INCB in 2002.

Dr. Emafo has been a member of the INCB since 2000 and served as a member of the Standing Committee on Estimates since 2000 and was Rapporteur of the Board in 2001.  He is a distinguished pharmacist and has served on the World Health Organization (WHO) Advisory Panel on Pharmaceuticals and on a WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence.  He has been a member of various expert advisory groups, including United Nations expert groups, which reviewed the United Nations machinery for drug control on several occasions, most recently in 1997-98.  He has also advised the Organization of African Unity on drug control issues.

Also elected were Edouard Armenakovich Babayan of the Russian Federation, First Vice-President; Maria Elena Medina-Mora of Mexico, Second Vice-President and Chairman of the Standing Committee on Estimates (SCE); and Madan Mohan Bhatnagar of India, Rapporteur.  The officers are elected by the Board to serve a one-year term, with the current appointments ending on the first day of the Board’s May 2004 session.

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