Ethiopian elected WHO head, Pakistani eliminated in 1st round voting

Ethiopia's Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus became the first African Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO)Aafter he defeated British and Pakistani candidates in Tuesday's elections in Geneva.

Former Pakistan Health Minister Sania Nishtar was eliminated in the first of three rounds of voting, getting only 38 votes from the 185 member countries at the World Health Assembly meeting.

In the final round, Tedros received 133 votes to British candidate David Nabarro's 50, with two abstentions.

Tedros will succeed China's Margaret Chan, who was born in Hong Kong and trained in Canada, when she completes her five-year tenure at the end of next month.

A former Ethiopian minister who has held the foreign and health portfolios, he said that his central priority will be to work for universal health coverage.

He has shown familiarity with India and commended the National Health Policy 2017 as a move towards universal coverage.

Indian Health Minister J.P. Nadda, who is in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, congratulated Tedros and said in a statement that India looked forward to working with him "to build a strong, resilient health system, especially in developing countries, to mitigate any vulnerability to health crises".

Nabarro, who was the western-backed candidate, is the Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the world organisation's Sustainable Development Agenda, and had been former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's envoy for dealing the Ebola epidemic that ravaged parts of Africa during 2014-15.

Africa has been the focus of international health crises like the Ebola epidemic that reverberated around the world and reappeared in the Democratic Republic of Congo this month after having been contained in 2015.

Now an African, Tedros, will be at the helm of global efforts to tackle health problems.

He is the first WHO head who is not a medical doctor. But besides his stint as Health Minister, he has also chaired of the Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Board. He was also co-chair of the Board of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

WHO Director-General's election process was run in the new spirit of transparency sweeping international organisations. Last November all the candidates presented their platform in an open forum

In January, WHO's executive board interviewed the candidates and selected three of the six candidates to be put up for election by the Assembly.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)

--IANS

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