WHY THE WHO? The World Health Organization is essential to convening scientific experts and the world’s best thinking on COVID-19. After levelling a slew of inaccurate or unsubstantiated charges against the World Health Organization (WHO) for its COVID-19 response and threatening to withdraw U.S. support for the WHO in a letter its director-general last week, Donald J. Trump today announced his intent to carry through. Between blaming the WHO for the pandemic’s global cost and praising WHO’s response to the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic, his letter had gotten at least one thing right. He implicitly recognised the need for an effective, empowered international organisation to facilitate global health cooperation. #WHO #COVID19 #Health #TedrosAdhanom

Swiss cardiologist calls for the abolishment of the WHO. Ethiopian authorities led a campaign to discredit the World Health Organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, ahead of his reappointment in 2022, including by having him followed in Geneva, media organisations revealed on Monday. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), was one of the faces of the Covid-19 pandemic. He would regularly make public statements during one of the worst crises ever experienced by the UN agency. His prominent role also earned him repeated accusations of mismanagement, notably from former US president Donald Trump, who criticised the WHO’s lack of reaction and independence towards China. On top of that, media reports revealed on Monday that the Ethiopian national was also dealing with a personal, professional and judicial smear campaign concocted by his own government. The revelations come after a data leak from the Ethiopian Financial Intelligence Service (FIS) was obtained by the UK-based NGO Distributed Denial of Secrets. The information was then analysed by the Paris-based Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and passed on to Bloomberg, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Continent in South Africa, and the Swiss investigative journalism unit of Tamedia, publisher of Tribune de Genève and 24 Heures. #WHO #Ethiopia #Health #TedrosAdhanom