The betting was almost done before the vote by secret ballot during the World Assembly which was held on Tuesday May 24 in Geneva, doctor Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus being the only candidate in the running.

First African at the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), at 57, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus therefore retains his post for a second term of five years.

A malaria specialist, graduate in immunology and doctor of community health, Dr. Tedros, as he likes to call himself, was Minister of Health and head of diplomacy in his country.

His face has been made familiar around the world by the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, one of his main concerns. 

A personal story related to the war

He who poses as a man of peace was marked by a childhood immersed in war but also the conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen, Syria and Ethiopia during his first term.

"Even more than pandemics, war shakes and destroys the foundations on which previously stable societies rested" and conflicts leave "psychological scars that can take years or decades to heal", Dr Tedros recently asserted, for whom "peace is essential to health".

These scars are as many sufferings that he himself endured.

"I am a child of war," the head of the WHO said on Sunday, very moved, at the opening of the World Health Assembly.

"The sound of gunshots and shells whistling through the air, the smell of smoke after impact, tracer bullets in the night sky, fear, pain, loss – these things have remained in me throughout my life, because I was in the middle of the war when I was very young," he said.

Years later, with war resurging in Ethiopia in 1998, "that fear" returned when it was her children's turn to "hide in a bunker".

And while the Ethiopian region of Tigray, his native region, has been plagued by conflict since the end of 2020, he admits to feeling "the same pain again". 

His childhood was also marked by the death of a brother, due to lack of medication.

Hated by Donald Trump

Warm, Dr. Tedros is much appreciated, especially by Africans, for having allowed the gaze of the international community, especially during the pandemic, to turn more towards this continent.

The main criticism came from his own country, with Addis Ababa accusing him of "abusing his position" after his comments on the humanitarian situation in Tigray.

The arrival of Democrat Joe Biden in the White House, who put the United States back in the fold of the WHO, gave him a second wind, while he was constantly attacked by Donald Trump, who had cut the food to the organization he accused of mismanaging the Covid-19 pandemic and being too close to Beijing.

The more critical tone of Dr. Tedros towards China, which he considers not to be transparent enough on the origin of the pandemic, has earned him some reprimands from Beijing, which however supports its renewal.

A scandal of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo perpetrated by employees of his organization – among other aid workers – earned him a volley of green wood twice from several dozen member countries, who considered his reaction too soft and too slowly.

But the pandemic has shown that his calls often go unheeded.

After a first mandate marked by Covid-19, which exposed the shortcomings of the WHO and the global health system, Dr Tedros will have to win the bet of strengthening the UN agency in particular to better prevent and manage diseases. future epidemics.

With AFP

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