“Created in 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a broad mandate to guide and coordinate international health policy, monitoring public health risks, and coordinating responses to health emergencies.” Its main objective is “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.”
WHO has an impressive record: “WHO has played a leading role, most notably in the eradication of smallpox, the near-eradication of polio, and the development of an Ebola vaccine.” WHO was actually founded at the request of the Republic of China.
Between 1990 and 2010, WHO’s help has contributed to a 40 percent decline in the number of tuberculosis deaths, and since 2005, over 46 million people have been treated, with an estimated 7 million lives saved through practices advocated by WHO.
Unlike some other UN organizations—such as the UN Human Rights Commission, with major human-rights abusers as members, and the United Nations Children’s Fund, with Unicef admitting failures amid child-abuse allegations—WHO has succeeded because it was trusted and strived to be nonpolitical.
The current Director-General of WHO is Ethiopian Tedros Ghebreyesus, who was his nation’s Minister of Health from 2005 to 2012. But from 2012 to 2016 he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Think of Ethiopia as a beautiful country, perhaps the historical home of the biblical Queen of Sheba, maybe the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, and outstanding coffee. But since the 1974 overthrow by the Derg, a communist military government backed by the USSR, of the Ethiopian monarchy under Haile Selassie, it has become a classic “Third-World Hellhole.”
In 1977-1978, up to 500,000 were killed as a result of the Derg “Red Terror” policy. An almost democratic government came to power in 2018 after the first ruler in modern Ethiopian history stepped down; previous leaders have died in office or been overthrown. But the country still is rated “Not Free” at the same level as Kazakhstan and Cambodia.
During Ghebreyesus’s time as Foreign Minister, China became Ethiopia’s largest foreign investor with 60 percent of its total FDI. Ethiopia owes China about $12 billion, equal to more than 10 percent of the total GDP.
In 2016, Ghebreyesus actively campaigned for the top WHO position. He was—according to the Guardian newspaper—“supported by a bloc of African and Asian countries, including China, which has considerable influence with those members. One observer called it “a really nasty” election.”
January 22, 2020: “Coronavirus: WHO steps back from declaring public health emergency.” January 30, 2020: “WHO declares global public health emergency.” February 11, 2020: “WHO says Covid-19 is not a pandemic.” February 17, 2020: “WHO warns of ‘very grave’ global virus threat.”
March 3, 2020: “World health officials say the mortality rate for Covid-19 is 3.4 percent globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2 percent.” And that turned out disastrously wrong as WHO incorrectly compared Covid to the flu. The fatality rate for the coronavirus did not include those who had the coronavirus but were not confirmed as with the flu.
Now we come to this. October 8, 2020: “Dr. David Nabarro, the WHO’s Special Envoy on Covid-19, tells Andrew Neil: “We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method.” Once again, we need to go back to work, isolate areas with outbreaks, and quarantine the sick not the healthy.
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Image credits: Christopher Black/WHO via AP