Shattered by a pandemic that exposed a flawed and failing global health system, the world has a rare chance to remake both WHO and core global infrastructure for pandemic preparedness and response. Will it?
January 15, 2020
Countries should fight public health threats with the same vigor they use to tackle terrorism, WHO warns in a roundup of the top health challenges of the next decade. Highlights from the list (in no particular order):
September 5, 2018
Complex problems. Competing priorities. Insufficient resources. Conflicting opinions. Political concerns. Just 24 hours in a day... There’s no end to obstacles in public health, but leaders must find a way—or fail. In September 2018, Global Health NOW launches a series (a…
September 4, 2018
When he was the Minister of Health for Ethiopia, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus used to worry instead about the health of 100 million people. Now as WHO’s Director-General, Tedros has 7.5 billion people to worry about.
September 4, 2018
Since taking charge of WHO in July 2017, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has sought to transform the organization. Tedros (as he likes to be known) has focused WHO on health equity, confronting new threats, and emergency preparedness and response. David Peters,…
May 18, 2018
The WHO decided Friday that the latest Ebola outbreak is not an international emergency, even as the organization ramped up its response and worries grew as the first confirmed case appeared in a major city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The emergency committee…
October 4, 2017
The WHO’s senior leadership team will now be 60% women. The elite group of 14 working under Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus includes 2 female deputy directors: India’s former health secretary Soumya Swaminathan and Jane Ellison, once a UK parliamentary health…
August 15, 2017
A few months into his tenure as the new WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tackles some tough topics in a conversation with Foreign Affairs—and says the WHO cannot be shy about getting political. Making a pitch for universal health care, he says, “Expanding…
June 30, 2017
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus makes history tomorrow, beginning his 5-year-term as WHO Director-General and becoming the first African to lead the organization. Elected on May 23 during the 70th World Health Assembly, Tedros (as he likes to be known) campaigned on universal…
June 28, 2017
By tackling factory farming, the WHO could fight all 3 of the “slow-motion disasters” outlined by outgoing WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, MD at last year’s World Health Assembly (WHA): climate change, antibiotic resistance and noncommunicable diseases threatening…