Controversies of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has served since 2017 as the Director-General of the World Health Organization. He is the first non-medical doctor to do so, instead a PhD in community health.

Previously, he was the Minister of Health from 2005 to 2012 and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2016 in Ethiopia.

Tigray People’s Liberation Front

Tedros is a member of the TPLF, an ethnic based leftist political party. The TPLF is actively listed as a perpetrator in the Global Terrorism Database, based on ten incidents from between 1976 and 1990.

New York Times reports Tedros “was the country’s foreign minister, and during this time the government suppressed dissent. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reports describe villages displaced, protesters massacred by the police, dissidents tortured and journalists imprisoned. Dr. Tedros is not accused of participation, but he is among the ruling party elite. The rights violations ‘should never have happened,’ he said.”

Here is one such voice that fought against Tedros saying he WAS responsible. The Amharas are an ethnic group in Ethiopia, comprising one third of the population. The Amhara Professionals Union produced this paper, “International Organizations Leadership Recruitment Policies: the Failed Experiment of Dr. Tedros A. Ghebreyesus Candidacy for WHO Director General Position”

The executive summary lists out 13 points, of which they say Tedros is guilty, specifically against their people:

1. Discrimination/Marginalization
2. Crime against Humanity
3. Systematic genocidal violence
4. Biased policies, inaction and impartiality
5. Corruption and misuse of budget
6. Disregard for Humanity
7. Incompetency/Inaction
8. Lack of transparency
9. Maleficence and risking public safety
10. Poor judgement
11. Lack of accountability
12. Violation of basic Human Rights/Suppression of freedom of expression
13. [Lack of] Integrity/Truthfulness/Honesty

The document appears to back up all the claims with statistics and references in this 70 page document.

The terrorist TPLF helped fund Tedros’ bid for WHO director.

Covering Up Cholera Outbreaks?

Tedros has been accused of covering up previous epidemics, specifically three times with cholera in Ethiopia. To be fair, these accusations were from an adviser to an opponent in his WHO directorship. Of course, Tedros denied these accusations.

But these were not completely baseless. Earlier articles discussed unnamed health officials in Ethiopia (Tedros was top health person at the time) of not wanting to test what would ultimately be labelled “acute watery diarrhea” for the cholera microbes. This was because of fear of affecting food exports and tourism.

A telling section of that NY Times article says, “Under the International Health Regulations, which apply to all W.H.O. members, countries must accurately report disease outbreaks. But the W.H.O. can officially report only what countries say. Historically, some countries have tried to cover up or play down outbreaks of human or animal diseases for fear that travel restrictions would be imposed, tourism would suffer or food exports would be curtailed — or simply as a matter of national pride…The regulations were strengthened after China denied for months in 2003 that it had a serious outbreak of lethal respiratory disease in its southern cities. That outbreak ultimately became known as SARS, for severe acute respiratory syndrome, and spread to several other countries, including Canada.” (emphasis added)

Elected as Director General of WHO

Elections are done by secret ballots. This allows for backdoor deals to be cut. Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells of a prior election for the WHO director in 1991.

“I was in a queue at the post office when the conference room door flung open at my back and an enormous rolled rug flew out, narrowly missing me and landing with a loud thud that couldn’t cover the sound of an African minister of health’s roaring voice.”

“A rug! A rug?” the large East African woman shouted at a trio of Japanese diplomats scampering out of the chamber. “You think you can buy my vote with a rug? Do you think I am that cheap?”

“The enraged minister then loudly delineated a list of “promises” (a.k.a. bribes) the Japanese had reportedly made to other voting members of the executive board, including construction of a hospital, payment of school fees for the children of Switzerland-based nationals employed at WHO, promised employment in plush Geneva for friends and family of the would-be voter and a range of big construction projects. The episode was astounding not because it transpired, but that it did so in front of many witnesses, including an American journalist.”

Understanding the backroom deals are made for organizations such as the WHO (and certainly not the only one) is helpful for understanding geopolitics.

New York Times reports “Tedros was elected with the strong support of China…He has firmly backed Beijing’s claims to have been open and transparent about the outbreak, despite strong evidence that it suppressed early reports on infections.”

In 2012, the African Union headquarters was built in Ethiopia for $200 million. This was the largest construction project since the 1970’s paid for by China. This was one construction project of many. CNN reports, “While Beijing defends its aid practices on the grounds they are neutral and respect recipient nations’ sovereignty, Chinese money is not wholly unpolitical.”

“China’s President Xi Jinping pledged $60bn for development in Africa,” which included $4 billion for the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway.

Tedros himself mentioned in 2015 on Facebook, “Under the “Go Global” program of #China, we expect increased Chinese investment flow to #Ethiopia . The 8 industrial parks identified throughout #Ethiopia , some already under construction, will facilitate the migration of Chinese companies to #Ethiopia”

I don’t know exactly what sort of deals went down, but it is clear that Tedros is very much tied to people in power in the Chinese Communist Party and the money that flows because of such.

President Robert Mugabe

Current events are not the first time that Tedros is facing calls to resign. In 2017, he appointed Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe as the WHO’s goodwill ambassador for non-communicable disease in Africa.

Here’s a bio video if you’re not familiar with this socialist revolutionary turned dictator.

A Guardian article wrote, “Mugabe rigged elections and began a programme of land reform in which white farmers were forcibly evicted to make way for Zanu-PF party cronies or black Zimbabweans who lacked the skills and capital to farm. This helped throw the economy into disarray. Hyperinflation ran riot and supermarket shelves were empty. The once-proud school and health systems began to crumble. The political environment also became increasingly hostile, with activists and journalists persecuted, jailed or murdered. More than 200 people died in political violence around the 2008 election, which Mugabe was widely seen as having stolen from the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai.”

Tedros said, “I am honoured to be joined by President Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the centre of its policies to provide healthcare to all.”

Please note that Mugabe did not use Zimbabwe’s healthcare, instead traveling Singapore for himself and his family.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) wrote a withering report of Mugabe’s government. “What happens when a government presides over the dramatic reversal of its population’s access to food, clean water, basic sanitation, and healthcare? When government policies lead directly to the shuttering of hospitals and clinics, the closing of its medical school, and the beatings of health workers? We don’t need to wonder. It is happening now in Zimbabwe. PHR has witnessed the devastation caused by the willful neglect of Zimbabwe’s people by the Government of Robert Mugabe.”

Even the US state department said: “This appointment clearly contradicts the United Nations ideals of respect for human rights and human dignity.”

The appointment was rescinded under the private and public outcry. Wasn’t this obviously a bad idea to Tedros before it happened? Many think that this appointment was payback to both Mugabe and China.

“Hillel Neuer, executive director of the watchdog organization UN Watch, told me, “It’s clear that this was a prize, if not compensation, for something.” Tedros may have been rewarding Mugabe for supporting his nomination to the WHO post last year, when Tedros was Ethiopia’s foreign minister and Mugabe headed the African Union… Beijing strongly supports Mugabe, and Mugabe has repaid the favor, helping to ease pressure from Africans who criticize China for exploiting Africa’s natural resources. In December 2015, Mugabe gushed about Xi at the China-Africa summit in Johannesburg,” from the Washington Post.

Relationship to Taiwan

The day after being elected as Director, Tedros reiterated the WHO’s adherence to the one-China principle, meaning that Taiwan would not be recognized.

This has led to the well-circulated video of WHO official, Canadian epidemiologist Bruce Aylward dodging questions about Taiwan.

This is particularly interesting because “Taiwan said its doctors had heard from mainland colleagues that medical staff were getting ill — a sign of human-to-human transmission. Taipei officials said they reported this to both International Health Regulations (IHR), a WHO framework for exchange of epidemic prevention and response data between 196 countries, and Chinese health authorities on December 31. Taiwanese government officials told the Financial Times the warning was not shared with other countries.”

Handling the Coronavirus Pandemic

Here is a good and short overview video on the WHO’s response, which covers some of the other things mentioned here.

On Jan 14^th, the WHO tweeted “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China”

On January 28^th, Tedros talked about China including, “the transparency they have demonstrated, including sharing data.”

Please note that China has officially revised their stats, increasing them by 50% as reported on April 17th. (As if these new numbers should be taken as the truth.)

Meanwhile, coronavirus whistleblowers in China are still missing.

The WHO didn’t even send a team to China until February 10^th.

On February 15^th, Tedros stated, “China has bought the world time.”

Meanwhile, “John Mackenzie, a member of the WHO executive committee, publicly stated that international action would have been different if not for China’s “reprehensible” obfuscation of outbreak’s extent.”

In a recent report put out by the WHO, Tedros stated:  “It has now been more than 100 days since WHO was notified of the first cases of what we now call COVID‑19, and much has changed since we launched the first Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan two months ago… One of the main things we’ve learned is that the faster all cases are found, tested and isolated, the harder we make it for this virus to spread.”

Are you kidding me? I have never been a health minister. I’m not a part of the WHO. I’m not an infectious disease expert. But I could have told you from the very beginning of this that finding cases, testing them and then isolating them would help. Seriously, this is what you’ve learned?

Today, April 22nd, he said, “Most countries are still in the early stages of their epidemics and some that were affected early in the pandemic are now starting to see a resurgence in cases. Make no mistake, we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time. There is no question that stay-at-home orders and other physical distancing measures have successfully suppressed transmission in many countries. But this virus remains extremely dangerous.”

Since the WHO is the leader of the response for this pandemic that is almost assuredly what is going to happen.

Again I ask, is Tedros merely inept at his job? Or is all this a sign of corruption? I leave you to judge for yourself.

Yet this only scratches the surface. In the next article I’ll be detailing patterns of corruption from the WHO over the years. Lots of other people have been covering Tedros as of late but I went far and wide to round up what’s coming next.

History is the best indicator of future performance. History of the WHO helps give perspective on current events. Because they are the worldwide health authority now we should know if they deserve that status. Stay tuned!