Jun 2, 2018, 02:15 AM by System

Today the Member States of WHO elected Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as the new Director-General of WHO.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was nominated by the Government of Ethiopia, and will begin his five-year term on 1 July 2017.

Prior to his election as WHO’s next Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ethiopia from 2012–2016 and as Minister of Health, Ethiopia from 2005–2012. He has also served as chair of the Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; as chair of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Board; and as co-chair of the Board of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

As Minister of Health, Ethiopia, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus led a comprehensive reform effort of the country's health system, including the expansion of the country’s health infrastructure, creating 3500 health centres and 16 000 health posts; expanded the health workforce by 38 000 health extension workers; and initiated financing mechanisms to expand health insurance coverage. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, he led the effort to negotiate the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, in which 193 countries committed to the financing necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

As Chair of the Global Fund and of RBM, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus secured record funding for the two organizations and created the Global Malaria Action Plan, which expanded RBM’s reach beyond Africa to Asia and Latin America.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will succeed Dr Margaret Chan, who has been WHO’s Director-General since 1 January 2007.</s>On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a health expert from Ethiopia, was elected as the new director-general to lead the United Nations agency focused on international public health.

Tedros, who prefers to be called by his first name, will be taking over the position from Dr. Margaret Chan, who has been overseeing the agency since 2006. Tedros will serve a five-year term in the new position which will be begin on July 1. He will be the first health official from Africa to serve as director-general.

In a speech before the election—part of a weeklong meeting of health ministers from 194 nations in Geneva—Tedros talked about growing up in Ethiopia, saying he comes from a background of “knowing survival cannot be taken for granted, and refusing to accept that people should die because they are poor.” Tedros also spoke about the need for universal access to health care, a better response to health emergencies and the need to tackle gender-based violence, as well as threats to global health like climate change, the migrant crisis and terrorism.

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The two other candidates were Britain’s Dr. David Nabarro, a health official who has lead the United Nations response to a variety of health problems, including the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and Dr. Sania Nishtar, the first female cardiologist in Pakistan.

Tedros is a former health and foreign affairs minister from Ethiopia. As a foreign affairs minister Tedros focused on accelerating Africa’s economic, political and social development. According to his director-general application, as health minister, he oversaw the creation of 3,500 health centers and 16,000 health posts, which contributed to considerably cutting child mortality rates, HIV infections, malaria deaths and deaths from tuberculosis.

“I envision a world where everyone can lead healthy and productive lives, regardless of who they are or where they live,” Tedros wrote in his WHO application. “Achieving this will require a stronger and reformed WHO that belongs to all of us equally, and that is efficiently managed, adequately resourced and results-driven—with a strong focus on transparency, accountability and value for money.”

The WHO election comes at a difficult time in public and global health. The WHO’s reputation suffered due to its response to the Ebola outbreak that started in 2014. Critics argued the organization was too slow in responding to the outbreak, which infected more than 28,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and killed more than 11,000. Just a couple years after the start of the epidemic, the Zika virus swept through South America and beyond, resulting in thousands of cases of the severe birth defect microcephaly among infants.

As TIME recently reported, the organization is not yet ready to take on another epidemic of similar proportions. The organization has an annual budget of about $2.2 billion, which is less than major hospitals, the New York Times reports. Thirty percent of that budget comes from United Nation dues, and the rest comes from donated funds.

MORE: The World Is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic

“Tedros is an excellent choice to lead WHO,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in an email sent to TIME. “He succeeded in Ethiopia, making remarkable health progress by rapidly reforming a sclerotic bureaucracy and implementing effective community-based services. Precisely the same thing is needed to make WHO effective providing technical guidance and improving support to countries. Governments and organizations around the world should support WHO to become more effective—doing so is in all of our best interest.”

Yet the campaign was not without controversy. A informal advisor for rival candidate David Nabarro accused of covering up three cholera epidemics in his country of Ethiopia, where he served as health minister. Lawrence Gostin, the director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, told the New York Times: “Dr. Tedros is a compassionate and highly competent public health official, but he had a duty to speak truth to power and to honestly identify and report verified cholera outbreaks over an extended period.” Tedros denies the allegation and told the Times that Nabarro’s supporters have a “typical colonial mind-set aimed at winning at any cost and discrediting a candidate from a developing country.”

Frieden wrote an opinion letter to the Times defending Tedros. “Although not optimal, many countries report cholera to the World Health Organization as acute watery diarrhea, as Ethiopia has,” he wrote. “This allows reporting and response without laboratory confirmation, but in no way indicates that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former health minister of Ethiopia, is any less qualified to become director general of the W.H.O.”

Contact us at editors@time.com.</s>Tedros Adhanom Elected Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO)

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General-Elect (center), with Dr Veronika Skvortsova, President of the 70th World Health Assembly (left), and Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General. (UN photo)

GENEVA – The World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the United Nations health agency, today elected Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as the new Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was nominated by the Government of Ethiopia, and will begin his five-year term on 1 July 2017,” WHO said in a statement following the afternoon vote.

Among his previous positions, Dr. Tedros was Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and, prior, Minister of Health.

He also served as Chair of the Global Fund and of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Board (RBM), where he secured “record funding” for the two organizations and created the Global Malaria Action Plan, which expanded RBM’s reach beyond Africa to Asia and Latin America, according to the UN agency.

The incoming health chief was chosen from amongst three nominees presented to the World Health Assembly, along with David Nabarro from the UK, and Sania Nishtar from Pakistan, in a process that began before September 2016.

Dr. Tedros will succeed Margaret Chan, who yesterday addressed the World Health Assembly for the final time after serving two consecutive five-year terms.

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 Ethiopian wins race to be next leader of UN health agency (The Associated Press)

Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.</s>Today the Members States of the World Health Organization (WHO) elected Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as the new Director-General of WHO. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was nominated by the Government of Ethiopia, and will begin his five-year term on 1 July 2017. Prior to his election as WHO’s next Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus served […]http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...</s>Health officials from more than 180 countries meeting in Geneva on Tuesday have elected a new leader for the World Health Organization.

A former health minister from Ethiopia takes over an agency that's struggled recently to find the funding and exert the political leadership it needs to tackle the world's health problems.

After two rounds of secret balloting delegates at the World Health Assembly in Geneva chose Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to be the next director-general. Tedros, who goes by his first name (pronounced TAY-dros), won the job over Sania Nishtar, a cardiologist from Pakistan, and David Nabarro, a physician and WHO veteran from Britain who led the U.N.'s response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014. Tedros, who campaigned as "Dr. Tedros," is not a medical doctor; he has a Ph.D. in community health.

All three candidates promised to reform the famously bureaucratic WHO, champion universal health care and make the world safer from the next global pandemic.

In his final pitch for why he should lead the WHO, Tedros emphasized his experience as Ethiopia's health minister, overseeing the expansion of basic health services across the country.

"In six years we built more than 16,000 health posts, 3,000 health centers, deployed more than 40,000 health extension workers," he said.

This model of basic but universal health care in the East African nation has been widely praised.

"It was a massive effort delivering massive results," he said.

But the program was carried out by an authoritarian government in Addis Ababa. During a campaign in which many people have been calling for more openness at WHO, Tedros was criticized for Ethiopia's habit of downplaying domestic cholera outbreaks by labeling them "acute watery diarrhea."

But Tedros promised that transparency will be at the heart of the WHO once he's in charge.

"WHO must evolve to be more transparent, responsive, effectively managed, adequately resourced," he said during his final pitch.

Tedros takes over a World Health Organization that has struggled to live up to expectations. WHO sets global health policy and advocates for improved living conditions, especially for the world's poor. But it's also been accused of being overly bureaucratic, slow, wasteful and ineffective. Outgoing director-general Dr. Margaret Chan admitted that WHO failed to respond quickly or forcefully enough to the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014.

Paul Spiegel, the director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the health challenges facing the world are growing more and more complex.

"This is a make or break time for the World Health Organization," Spiegel told NPR.

"We are still awaiting for example a massive influenza outbreak that could kill tens of millions of people," Spiegel said.

In addition to outbreaks, non-communicable diseases like heart disease and diabetes have become huge health problems globally.

Spiegel says the world right now needs a strong WHO and WHO needs a strong leader. Tedros, the first African to be the director-general of WHO, will step in to that job in Geneva on July 1.</s>Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ethiopia's former health minister, has been elected to lead the World Health Organization. .</s>A former Ethiopian government official who led a major expansion of his country’s health-care system and served as foreign minister was elected Tuesday as the World Health Organization’s new director-general.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus defeated two challengers, David Nabarro and Sania Nishtar, to claim the world’s top public health post, winning election under a new open ballot system that gives equal weight to votes from each of...</s>Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former Ethiopian minister of health, was elected as the next director-general of the World Health Organisation on Tuesday, becoming the first non-medical doctor and the first African tapped to lead the UN health agency.

Delegates, health ministers and other high-level envoys chose Tedros over Britain’s Dr David Nabarro, a UN veteran, in the third and final round of voting. Tedros had 133 votes to Nabarro’s 50, with two abstentions. The third candidate, Pakistan’s Dr. Sania Nishtar, was eliminated in the first round.

Ethiopian delegates could be seen hugging and high-fiving each other after their countryman made it to the second round. Tedro succeeds China’s Dr. Margaret Chan, who is ending a 10-year tenure at the UN health agency on June 30.

The director-general of WHO wields considerable power in setting medical priorities that affect billions of people and declaring when crises like disease outbreaks evolve into global emergencies.

The agency has stumbled in recent years, most notably in its error-prone response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and all three candidates vowed to overhaul its organiaation to restore credibility.

Of the UN health agency’s 194 member states, 185 were eligible to cast ballots; nine others either were in arrears on their dues or not represented at the gathering.

Jean-Marie Ehouzou, the African Union’s top envoy in Geneva, expressed “happiness, happiness, happiness” at the result.

“It’s not only a question of symbolism,” he said, referring to Tedros’ status as the first African to run WHO. It shows when we are united, we can do everything.”

Before voting started, Tedros said it was almost “pure luck” that he was competing to lead WHO. In his appeal to voters, Tedros noted that when he was growing up in Ethiopia, his 7-year-old brother died of a common childhood disease, and it easily could have been him instead. He did not specify the disease.

His humble background, Tedros said, taught him to refuse “to accept that people should die because they’re poor.” He said he would work “tirelessly to fulfil WHO’s promise of universal health care,” among other pledges.

“There is real value in electing a leader who has worked in one of the toughest environments,” Tedros said, adding that he could “bring an angle the world has never seen before.”

The former health minister has been dogged by allegations from one of his rival Nabarro’s advisers that he covered up cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia, and protesters have occasionally interrupted proceedings at the meeting in Geneva this week.

But Tedros received a boost from Dr. Thomas Frieden, an ex-director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Frieden wrote a letter published in the New York Times last week that commended Tedros for his creation of a network of 40,000 female health workers that implemented programmes to save people from dying of diarrhea and other causes.

Nabarro tweeted his congratulations to Tedros after the vote, writing, “I urge everyone to unite behind him and his vision.”

Other health experts welcomed Tedros’ election, applauding his experience reforming health systems in Ethiopia. “He will bring great insight and the political leadership necessary to restore trust in the WHO at a critical moment in its history,” said Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a major British charitable foundation.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his congratulations on Twitter, writing, “Your leadership of @WHO will be crucial to ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages.”</s>Health officials from over 180 countries who met in Geneva on Tuesday elected a new director-general for the World Health Organization in the person of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – the first leader of the agency hailing from Africa.

A former health minister from Ethiopia, Tedros, who goes by his first name, will take over an organization that has been struggling to find funding and exert the political governance needed to address the world’s biggest health problems, NPR reports.

Delegates at the World Health Assembly in Geneva conducted two rounds of secret balloting to select the next director-general. Tedros won over cardiologist Sania Nishtar from Pakistan, and WHO veteran David Nabarro from Britain, who led UN efforts during the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014.

All three candidates said that if they won, they would reform the WHO’s bureaucratic system, put an emphasis on universal health care, and prevent the next worldwide pandemic.

Tedros is now a medical doctor, but has a Ph.D. in community health. During his campaign, he highlighted his experience as Ethiopia’s health minister, where he supervised the expansion of the country’s basic health services. He said, “In six years we built more than 16,000 health posts, 3,000 health centers, deployed more than 40,000 health extension workers.”

His model of basic yet universal health care in East Africa has been lauded globally. Tedros said, “It was a massive effort delivering massive results.”

However, Tedros did face massive criticism for downplaying local cholera outbreaks, calling them “acute watery diarrhea.” During a campaign that called for more openness at WHO, Tedros promised to champion transparency once elected. His final pitch stated,

WHO sets global health policies and advocates for better conditions among the world’s poor. But it has struggled in recent years to meet expectations, and has been accused of being extremely slow, wasteful, bureaucratic, and ineffective.

Tedros takes over former director-general Dr. Margaret Chan’s job on July 1.</s>Ethiopia’s Dr Tedros is new WHO Director-General

Geneva, Switzerland | WHO MEDIA| Today the Member States of WHO elected Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as the new Director-General of WHO.

Dr Tedros was nominated by the Government of Ethiopia, and will begin his five-year term on 1 July 2017. He will succeed Dr Margaret Chan, who has been WHO’s Director-General since 1 January 2007.

Prior to his election as WHO’s next Director-General, Dr Tedros served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ethiopia from 2012-2016 and as Minister of Health, Ethiopia from 2005-2012. He has also served as chair of the Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; as chair of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Board, and as co-chair of the Board of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

As Minister of Health, Ethiopia, Dr Tedros led a comprehensive reform effort of the country’s health system, including the expansion of the country’s health infrastructure, creating 3500 health centres and 16 000 health posts; expanded the health workforce by 38 000 health extension workers; and initiated financing mechanisms to expand health insurance coverage. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, he led the effort to negotiate the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, in which 193 countries committed to the financing necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

As Chair of the Global Fund and of RBM, Dr Tedrossecured record funding for the two organizations and created the Global Malaria Action Plan, which expanded RBM’s reach beyond Africa to Asia and Latin America.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) elects former Ethiopian Foreign Minister and Health Minister Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as the international organization's new Director-General succeeding Dr. Margaret Chan, who has been in office since 2006. Tedros is the first African Director-General and the first non-medical doctor; he has a PhD in Community Health from the University of Nottingham.