In the crosshairs of both pandemic and superpower management, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was appointed head of the World Health Organization in 2017,is the bête noire of Donald Trump and the US Right. The 55-year-old Eritrean-born Ethiopian has also, by default, become the champion of those who believe in international co-operation and solidarity in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. For Trump and Co., Tedros, the first African ever to head up the WHO, is simply the cat’s paw covering for the nefarious Chinese who, if they didn’t purposely start the virus, hid Covid-19’s earliest impacts, allowing it to spread. The Republicans pulled the plug on WHO funding, plunging it into crisis and endangering one of the few international supports for the beleaguered health systems of the Global South, particularly in Africa. Tedros has stood his ground, representing the WHO and multilateralism and refusing to ‘play politics’ while trying to maintain the clarity of a common fight against the virus.
But Tedros is an ambiguous figure. He has a solid record as a health administrator, leading campaigns to build up the public-health infrastructure of Ethiopia during his two terms as Minister of Health from 2005 to 2012. In that period infant mortality rates improved dramatically and malaria and HIV were ameliorated. On the other hand, Tedros was an insider in Meles Zenawi’s authoritarian Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) regime during one of its harsher periods of repression. Anyone showing an independent cast of mind, from judges to journalists, fell afoul of the police. Despite a reputation for being one of the softer, more approachable members of the Addis government, Tedros has continued to show a proclivity for being close to African ‘strongmen’. He was forced to back down when he tried in 2017 to appoint the Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe as a ‘Goodwill Ambassador’ for the WHO.
