WHO Director-General Tedros unopposed for 2nd Five-Year term

AP | The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is running unopposed for a second five-year term.

Tedros, the first African to head the U.N. health agency, has overseen its complex response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has overshadowed his tenure. Trained in biology and infectious diseases with a doctorate in community health, he is also the first WHO chief who is not a medical doctor.

The U.N. health agency made the announcement after the deadline for candidacies for the next term expired last month and Tedros name was proposed by 28 countries: more than half of them European, and 3 African: Botswana, Kenya and Rwanda. The formal selection of the next director-general takes place at the WHO’s next assembly in May.

A former health and foreign minister from Ethiopia, Tedros, received a strong endorsement when France and Germany announced their support for him shortly after the nomination period closed.

Tedros has been a leading voice urging wealthy countries with large COVID-19 vaccine stockpiles and the big pharmaceutical companies that make them to do more to improve access to the jabs in the developing world – a call that has largely gone unheeded. He has also called for a moratorium on booster shots so that more doses could be made available quicker to poorer countries, which has also mostly fallen on deaf ears.

WHO says more than 60 countries are now administering about 1 million booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines each day – about three times the number of first-time vaccine doses being administered daily in lower-income countries.