Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has led the World Health Organization through the pandemic, its toughest challenge since its founding more than 70 years ago. Under his leadership, the organization has faced criticism from all sides for its handling of the coronavirus and the political pressures around it, with President Donald Trump last year accusing the WHO of being “a puppet of China.”
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Despite all this, Tedros, who has been the WHO director general since 2017, is now all but assured to stay in the job for another five years.
In a statement released on Friday, the WHO announced that Tedros had been the only name proposed by multiple member states of the United Nations’ health body, and consequently the sole nominee for the upcoming election. The formal appointment of the director general will take place in May 2022, during the World Health Assembly, with the term of office beginning on Aug. 16, 2022.
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The news caused consternation among the critics of Tedros, who was the first African elected to the position. Some former members of the Trump administration who had clashed with WHO officials and moved to pull the United States out of the organization (a plan swiftly reversed by President Biden) said it was a mistake to grant Tedros a second term.
“This is a missed opportunity for the Biden administration to start anew at the World Health Organization,” said Anthony Ruggerio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who served on the Trump White House’s National Security Council.
But many public health experts welcomed the news that Tedros would remain in his position, arguing that despite mistakes, his leadership had helped calm some of the divisiveness seen throughout the pandemic.
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“Tedros has been the moral conscience of the world,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. “The world’s been splintering, and countries moving inwards with highly nationalistic, he’s urged global solidarity.”
Tedros also appears to have broad support among European leaders, who made up more than half of the countries that nominated him. At a media appearance with Tedros on Thursday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store offered praise for the incumbent WHO leader.
“I wish you all luck in your endeavor and I salute your staying power and your ability to keep focus on this agenda, servicing your broad membership and the whole world,” Store said.
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The election process began in April when member states were invited to submit proposals for candidates for the position, with 28 countries such as Bahrain, France and Indonesia taking part. A director general can be reappointed once, according to the WHO, making Tedros eligible for a second five-year term.
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Tedros, who has steered the global response to the devastating coronavirus pandemic that has killed almost 5 million people across the world, has come under geopolitical pressure on all fronts. Early in the pandemic, he was widely criticized by the United States and other Western powers for being too soft on China.
Later, however, he faced a backlash from Beijing as he sought to push China harder on controversial issues, including a stalled and inconclusive joint WHO-China investigation into the origins of the coronavirus that causes covid-19.
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In the global health world, Tedros has won plaudits for consistently speaking out against vaccine inequity, calling for the fairer sharing of doses with poorer nations. Along with other top WHO officials, he has held regular briefings for the media, often speaking several times a week in appearances that called for remarkable stamina.
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But even outside of geopolitical issues related to China and the United States, there have been problems. The WHO was criticized for its delayed guidance on masking during the pandemic, despite early signs that the virus was airborne. The WHO-backed vaccine sharing program Covax has struggled, despite constant promotion from Tedros.
The organization also faced a huge blow to its reputation after a report detailing sexual abuse allegations against WHO staffers during an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Tedros has pledged to overhaul policies on sexual abuse.
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Despite this, Tedros had received strong endorsements from France and Germany for a second term. Of the 28 countries that nominated him, most were European. Only three were from Africa: Botswana, Kenya and Rwanda.
Ethiopia, which had nominated Tedros for selection in 2017, did not do so this year. Tedros, a former government minister, has criticized Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for the conflict in Tigray. Tedros is a high-ranking member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the political party that rules Tigray and is in open conflict with Ethiopia’s central government.
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Ruggerio, the Trump administration official, criticized Tedros for praising China early in the pandemic “even in private” and said he worried that his team would become complacent in a second term.
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“It’s really it’s unclear to me why the Biden administration did not work with other countries to put forward a different candidate,” Ruggerio said.
The Trump administration began the process of leaving the WHO in July 2020, with an effective date of July 6, 2021, for the withdrawal. Members of that administration had planned to set up a new global health body, dubbed “America’s Response to Outbreaks,” but that faltered amid bureaucratic hurdles.
The Biden administration on Jan. 20, his first day in office, announced it was canceling the plan to leave the WHO. U.S. officials have been involved in deliberations about how to reform the global health body and strengthen international pandemic preparedness, with the topic up for discussion at the World Health Assembly starting Nov. 29.