Summary:

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

• first WHO director without a medical degree, also has a somewhat political background
• member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a communist revolutionary party that came to power in 1991
• Tigray represent only 6% of the population of Ethiopia
• TPLF was listed as a terrorist organisation by the US government in the 1990s, and is still listed as one by the Global Terror Database
• Amhara people have reported systematic discrimination and human rights abuses
• Tedros was health minister at a time when the regime was accused of covering up epidemics - A cholera outbreak was renamed to Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD)
• Ethiopia, known for the deadly famine which struck in the 1980s, still in 2016 at least 8.6 million people still in need of food aid to survive - at the end of Tedros’ illustrious term in office he could boast a mere remaining 8% of the population who would be left to starve to death without foreign aid
• In 2012 he was appointed foreign minister and there quickly followed a crackdown on journalists and government opponents in the country - Tedros led negotiations to track down and deport dissidents from Yemen and imprison them in Ethiopia
• Mass protests engulfed the country in 2016 - police responded at first with tear gas, and then later, with mass shootings. The violence and resulting stampede killed an estimated 500 people. A state of emergency was issued, arresting an estimated 70,000 people, and forced dozens of opposition journalists into exile
• Tedros previously argued against the ICC trial of Uhuru Kenyatta under whose government 1,300 had been killed after rigged elections
• Also nominated Robert Mugabe as goodwill ambassador to the WHO; A man who ordered the killings of 20,000 people in Zimbabwe during the 1980s
• Facing almost no rise in budgets during the 1990s, the WHO turned towards the corporate sector for additional funding, and by 2008, corporate donations made up 80% of the organisation’s budget
• the role that large drug companies played in shaping global health policy created a serious conflict of interest
• the WHO spent $200 million a year on travel expenses
• WHO employees working to relieve the Cholera epidemic in Yemen had actually siphoned off the funds for officials
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation played a large role in promoting Tedro
• The media of course portrayed Tedros as a saintly figure on a moral mission to cure the world of deadly diseases
• The mismanagement of the WHO through people like Tedros has totally exacerbated the global coronavirus pandemic