Dr. Tedros Adhanom of Ethiopia has been elected as the new Director-General of the World Health Organization, beating the British candidate David Nabarro, in the third round of voting.
Awramba Times (Geneva, Switzerland) – Dr. Tedros Adhanom, former Ethiopian minister of health and foreign affairs, was elected as the first African Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, beating the British candidate David Nabarro in the third round of voting at the Seventieth World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
In a first round of voting, the race to lead the WHO was down to two candidates after Pakistan’s Dr. Sania Nishtar was eliminated and Ethiopia’s Tedros Adhanom was leading the race after two rounds of voting.
A correspondent for Associated Press reported that Ethiopian delegates could be seen hugging and high-fiving each other after their countryman made it to the second round, which Tedros went on to win with 121 votes versus Nabarro’s 62.
The election later moved to a third round of voting; Tedros has won two-thirds of the votes to be named to succeed China’s Dr. Margaret Chan, who is ending a 10-year tenure at the U.N. health agency.
Of the U.N. health agency’s 194 member states, 185 were eligible to cast ballots; nine others were either in arrears on their dues or not represented at the gathering.
In his address to delegates, Dr. Tedros said it was almost “pure luck” that he was competing to lead WHO. He noted that when he was growing up in Ethiopia, his 7-year-old brother was killed by a common childhood disease, and it easily could have been him.
The ougoing Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, in her final opening address to the World Health Assembly, offered some advice to delegates “as you continue to shape the future of this Organization”. She called on the Health Assembly to make “reducing inequalities” a guiding ethical principle. “WHO stands for fairness,” she said. Countries should also work to improve collection of health data and make health strategies more accountable.
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