Would We Let Mengele Lead the W.H.O.?

Would We Let Mengele Lead the W.H.O.?
The World Health Organization (WHO) supervises and manages international health within the United Nations’ system. Its policies and operations affect millions of lives around the world.
Today, at its 70th World Health Assembly, its member states elected a new Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia.

Controversy preceded Dr. Tedro’s election. According to Lawrence O. Gostin, the director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, a prominent global health expert who was also an informal adviser to a rival candidate, Dr. Tedros covered up three cholera outbreaks by simply renaming them “Acute Watery Diarrhea” despite confirmation of the diagnosis of Vibrio cholerae. His refusal to declare a state of emergency prevented basic sanitation from being implemented and public health surveillance from being expanded. This caused a nationwide cholera epidemic.1

What did not make the news in time for the vote was that, as a member of Ethiopia’s governing Central Committee, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Minister of Health, Dr. Tedros has since 2005 been a key perpetrator of the genocide of several Ethiopian tribes, particularly the Amhara. [additional link here]2

The regime Dr. Tedros serves is a notorious ethnic dictatorship whose leaders have annexed to their Tigrayan tribal homeland territories historically inhabited by the Amhara people, such as Wolkaite and Raya.

Human rights and professional medical organizations charge that, in furtherance of this policy, Tedros implemented superior healthcare for Tigray at the expense of Ethiopia’s other ethnic groups, especially the Amhara, that resulted in significant inequalities in access to healthcare and results.

Disproportionately high mortality, coupled with a coercive, ethnic-based circulation of injectable contraceptives that rendered many Amhara women sterile, led to the intentional reduction of the growth rate of the Amhara people.3

Although HIV/AIDS afflicted the Amhara region more than any other in Ethiopia4, under Dr. Tedros the Amhara got substantially less HIV testing and treatment than the Tigray region.5 He directed the distribution of iodine-deficient salt to many Ethiopians, especially Amhara children. During a national shortage, the Tigray region received special iodized salt distribution while the Amhara region suffered a steady decline in its distribution.

These measures permanently affected Amhara pediatric brain development.6 Such ethnic-based differences were created and grew across virtually all measures of health during Tedros’s tenure. To say his conduct breached a basic principle of medical ethics— nonmaleficence–would be a gross understatement. It was mass murder. Dr. Tedros proudly represents a government that uses aid as a weapon. [additional links here and here.] Families of opposition members are barred from participation in the “Productive Safety Net” food-for-work program. Such discrimination often means death or incapacitation. Meanwhile, senior Ethiopian leaders oversee the illegal diversion [additional link here.] from the economy of billions of dollars urgently needed by its sick and hungry into private accounts.
Would We Let Mengele Lead the W.H.O.?
Dr Tedros Adhanom

Ethiopia is a quasi-apartheid regime [additional link here] that is illegitimate under international law and should not be recognized by the UN in the first place. Besides ethnic cleansing, it perpetrates state-inflicted terror including mass murder, torture, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and disappearances, primarily against political activists, human rights defenders, journalists and pro-democracy organizers from the Oromo, Amhara and other ethnic groups. These are well-documented by international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nation’s own Commission on Human Rights.

In the past year alone, more than one thousand innocent civilians were murdered by Ethiopian security forces and more than 20,000 peaceful citizens summarily arrested on fabricated charges. The country’s mountains and forests are dotted with the mass graves of this government’s genocide victims.7 As a high-ranking official, Tedros shares culpability for these atrocities. He should be prosecuted by international law enforcement instead of offered a prestigious leadership position at WHO. Ethiopia has produced better-qualified candidates for the Director-General spot.

Unfortunately, Dr. Tedros’s government has killed, jailed or driven them into exile. Ethiopia’s rulers badly wanted their henchman in this high-profile job to bolster their international image, battered this year after its latest bloody crackdown on civil society. Needless to say, the WHO’s credibility, efficiency and millions of lives has been jeopardized so a dictatorship can gain a propaganda coup. The WHO has serious global health, safety and security obligations. Following the Kurt Waldheim scandal, in which the UN’s Secretary General himself was later found to have lied about his Nazi past, its nominating bodies should have implemented more stringent vetting procedures. The relevant Inspectors General and audit mechanisms must investigate how another politician with a shady past has been rewarded with one of the UN’s most important jobs.

1 Amey Kouwonou. 2006. WHO Ethiopia Programe. Report on the field visit to provide technical support in emergency preparedness and response to Amhara regional state.
Susan A Bartels et al. Investigation of a Cholera Outbreak in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2010; 4: 312-317.

Emergency and Humanitarian Action (EHA). Weekly Update- WHO Country Office Ethiopia: (Week 22, 25-31 May 2009).

2 Tesfaw, Muluken. Yetifat Zemen (English title: Age of Distraction). Grief Publishers, 2016

3 Sources for Health Disparities: Referenced sources: DHS 2000, 2005, 2011, 2014 and 2016; HSDP II, III, HSDP IV and HSTP 2015; Health and Health related indicators 2015; Health Institutions and Services by Aynalem Adugna 2014; Reviewing Ethiopia’s Health System Development by Richard Wamai 2009. These are official data published by the Ethiopian government itself. (Referenced page numbers in attached document below.)

4 AIDS in Ethiopia Sixth Report: Graph showing Amhara region devastation by HIV/AIDS, mainly in rural areas where the majority lives, especially in the 1990’s

5 Sources for Health Disparities: Referenced sources: DHS 2000, 2005, 2011, 2014 and 2016; HSDP II, III, HSDP IV and HSTP 2015; Health and Health related indicators 2015; Health Institutions and Services by Aynalem Adugna 2014; Reviewing Ethiopia’s Health System Development by Richard Wamai 2009. These are official data published by the Ethiopian government itself. (Referenced page numbers in attached document below.)

6 Ibid.

7 Tesfaw, Muluken. Yetifat Zemen (English title: Age of Distraction). Grief Publishers, 2016