Head of WHO Faces Accusations

Tedros Adhanom Ghegreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), has been accused of “covering up cholera epidemics, supporting a terrorist organization and inflating his resume to claim he conquered malaria and HIV,” as reported by Fox News.

His campaign to rewrite his past has prompted some people to wonder if he is the right person to lead the global agency through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Tedros is the second-to-last person who should be heading the world World Health Organization at this time,” said foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang. “The last person is (Chinese President) Xi Jinping.”

The @WHO director-general @DrTedros has responded to Donald Trump halting US funding for the body.

"This is a time for all of us to be united in our common struggle against a common threat."

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Fox News reported that Tedros has been accused of “cozying up” to countries like China as these countries pledged large amounts of money to the agency.

In March, Tedros applauded Xi and tweeted: “For the first time, #China has reported no domestic #COVID19 cases yesterday. This is an amazing achievement, which gives us all reassurance that the #coronavirus can be beaten.”

According to Fox News, Beijing was accused of COVID-19-related cover-ups. Health experts say that China suppressed information about the virus and endangered millions of lives.

“Tedros permitted Xi Jinping to make public health decisions for the World Health Organization, and that slowed down the global response to the coronavirus outbreak at crucial moments,” Chang said. “Moreover, Tedros, by making comments supporting the totalitarian form of rule over democracy, made himself a part of Xi's campaign to bring despotism to the planet. Democracies should defund WHO if Tedros stays.”

Tedros also commended President Trump for the way he is addressing the pandemic. However, the number of cases still rose.

Tedros landed his current job after three rounds of secret-ballot voting. He was “accused of covering up three cholera epidemics in Ethiopia when he was health minister,” reported Fox News. The report added that he denied the allegations and claimed they were made as part of a “last-minute smear campaign” against him. The director of O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Lawrence Gostin, called out Ethiopia’s history of denying cholera outbreaks.

In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Tedros claimed that the outbreaks in 2006, 2009, and 2011 were only “acute watery diarrhea” in remote areas where laboratory testing “is difficult.” During earlier outbreaks, news organizations like The Guardian and The Washington Post reported that unnamed Ethiopian officials were “pressuring aid agencies to avoid using the word ‘cholera’ and not to report the number of people affected,” said a report from The New York Times.

According to Journalist Abebe Gellaw, Tedros was one of the top three members of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and it is “ultimately responsible for all the corruption, killings, torture, mass detention, land grab or displacement,” which he wrote in the Ethiopian Registrar.

The TPLF has been categorized by the United States State Department as a terrorist organization because of its “violent activities before it became part of the ruling coalition and the government of Ethiopia in May 1991.”

According to Fox News, Gellaw has also accused Tedros of using a U.S.-based lobbying firm to inflate his resume. “He is hyping up his dubious successes: conquered malaria, destroyed HIV, reduced infant mortality, built thousands and thousands of clinics,” Gellaw wrote. “They never talk about the reality behind those exaggerated figures.”