Ethiopia’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday won the race to be the next head of the WHO, becoming the first African to lead the UN agency.
The former Ethopian health minister and foreign minister received more than half the votes in the first round and then won a decisive second-round election, beating Britain’s David Nabarro, who now serves as special adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change.
“It’s a victory day for Ethiopia and for Africa,” Ethiopian Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Negash Kebret Botora said before Tedros, as he is widely known, was to take the floor at the WHO’s annual World Health Assembly.
Photo: AP / Valentin Flauraud / Keystone
Six candidates had stood to take the helm at the WHO. The job has never before been earned through a competitive election and health officials from all over the globe thronged the assembly hall in the UN’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, where voting took place behind closed doors.
Tedros will begin his five-year term after WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) steps down after 10 years on June 30. Chan leaves a mixed legacy, after the WHO’s slow response to West Africa’s Ebola epidemic from 2013 to last year that killed 11,300 people.
In a last pitch before voting began, Tedros had appealed to ministers by promising to represent their interests and to ensure more countries got top jobs at the Geneva-based WHO.
“I will listen to you. I was one of you. I was in your shoes and I can understand you better,” Tedros said. “I know what it takes to strengthen the frontlines of healthcare and innovate around the constraints.”
Tedros was widely seen as having the support of about 50 African votes, but questions about his role in restricting human rights and Ethiopia’s cover-up of a cholera outbreak surfaced late in the race, threatening to tarnish his appeal.
He will also be the first non-physician to hold the WHO post.
Nabarro, a physician and WHO insider who has worked for 40 years in international public health, had pitched himself as a “global candidate.”
Chan, in a speech on Monday, urged ministers to tackle inequalities as a “guiding ethical principle”.
“Scientific evidence is the bedrock of policy. Protect it. No one knows whether evidence will retain its persuasive power in what many now describe as a post-truth world,” she said.
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