TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS TO CONTINUE AS WHO CHIEF FOR 2ND TERM

Sat 30 October 2021:

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared on Friday that Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the only candidate for the position when his current term ends.

“A single candidate was proposed by Member States by the Sept. 23, 2021, deadline: Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,” the WHO said in a statement, adding that he secured the backing of 28 countries.

In 2017, the former Ethiopian health and foreign minister, who has been in the vanguard of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, was voted as the first African candidate to lead the world’s biggest public health organization.

He has been the public face of the WHO since the COVID-19 crisis began and is relatively popular due to his role in steering the organization’s efforts to coordinate the pandemic response.

Tedros continually raises his voice against inequity in the global vaccine rollout and urges countries to “do it all” to bring the pandemic under control.

He has also faced criticism after a devastating report of alleged rape and sexual assault by workers sent to fight Ebola in DR Congo between 2018 and 2020. A report found that 21 WHO employees were involved in such abuses.

The 75th World Health Assembly, the organization’s annual conference of member states, will formally nominate the next director-general by secret ballot in May 2022, and his new five-year tenure will begin in August.

The countries that nominated the 56-year-old are Austria, Bahrain, Barbados, Botswana, Cook Islands, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Oman, Portugal, Rwanda, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Tonga, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Tedros wants to reinforce global public health defences “to ensure the world is truly ready to prevent, prepare for and respond to another crisis of the nature of Covid-19 or worse.”

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