Germany is seeking support from other EU members to ensure a second term for WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, but African states have yet to show their cards, government sources and diplomats said on Wednesday.
The deadline for proposing candidates in the politically charged race was yesterday at 4pm GMT, and no other candidate for the election in May next year is known to have surfaced, they said.
Tedros, who was elected as the WHO’s first African director-general in May 2017, has this time been shunned by his native Ethiopia due to friction over a conflict in the country’s Tigray region.
Photo: AFP
German Minister of Health Jens Spahn on Tuesday backed a second term for Tedros and called on other countries to support the former Ethiopian health and foreign minister ahead of the deadline.
Government sources in Berlin on Wednesday told Reuters that it was now an official nomination.
“Right now an effort is going on, led by Germany, looking for other member states to join Germany in nominating him,” a Western diplomat said. “Germany won’t be alone.”
Tedros, who has been the public face of the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, has trodden a fine line while managing to anger both China and the US at different times.
The administration of former US president Donald Trump accused him of being “China-centric,” a charge he denies.
However, relations have improved since US President Joe Biden took office, and Tedros in July said that a second phase of studies into the origins of COVID-19 in China were needed, including audits of laboratories.
One African diplomat at the African Union said that the appointment of a new head of the WHO had not been discussed among member countries.
An African ambassador in Addis Ababa said that he was not aware of any member of the bloc preparing an alternative candidate.
Most regional countries are keen to see him stay in the job, where he has promoted their access to COVID-19 vaccines and the start of vaccine production on the continent, he said.
A senior African diplomat based in Geneva, Switzerland, said that he did not expect any bloc member to nominate Tedros, as he did not enjoy Ethiopia’s backing.
However, African countries are expected to support Tedros’ re-election, and the senior diplomat was not aware of any other candidates from Africa or another region.
“As a regional group it is always difficult when the home country doesn’t support its own national. It would be complicated for an African country other than his country of origin to take the initiative,” he said.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS