Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus - The African Mirror

Oct

2020

WHO ‘outraged’ by sex abuse reports in Congo Ebola operation

EMMA FARGE THE World Health Organization (WHO) has promised an investigation into "horrific" allegations of sexual abuse by aid workers combating an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "To be very clear, we are outraged to read these reports," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual news briefing in Geneva, promising punishment for perpetrators. "We will not tolerate behaviour like this from our staff, contractors or partners." The Thomson Reuters Foundation reported on Tuesday that more than 50 women had accused aid workers from the WHO and leading charities of sexual exploitation and abuse. Anyone found involved…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

Poorer countries to get 120 million $5 coronavirus tests, WHO says

COVID-19

EMMA FARGE and KATE KELLAND SOME 120 million rapid diagnostic tests for coronavirus will be made available to low- and middle-income countries at a maximum of $5 each, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced. The wider availability of quick, reliable and inexpensive testing will help 133 countries to track infections and contain the spread, closing the gap with wealthy ones, it said. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the manufacturers Abbott and SD Biosensor had agreed with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to "make 120 million of these new, highly portable and easy-to-use rapid COVID-19 diagnostic tests available…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

OPINION: The world must pull together on COVID-19 vaccine for all

COVID-19

MUKHTAR KARIM LAST week WHO Director Tedros Adhanom railed against ‘vaccine nationalism’, warning that ‘going it alone will perpetuate the economic and health crisis for all’. If history is any guide, he is right: if and when a vaccine is available, its effects will be limited to the world’s richest countries. The fantasy of a vaccine that, almost overnight, can eradicate COVID worldwide, is comforting but unrealistic. The UK and US, two of the richest countries in the world, took almost thirty years to eradicate polio after a vaccine was first produced in the 1950s. It was finally eradicated in…

Jul

2020

By The African Mirror

WHO says COVID-19 by far its worst global health emergency

COVID-19

The new coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 16 million people is easily the worst global health emergency the World Health Organization (WHO) has faced, its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday. Only with strict adherence to health measures, from wearing masks to avoiding crowds, would the world manage to beat it, Tedros added at a virtual news briefing in Geneva. "Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up," he said, praising Canada, China, Germany and South Korea for controlling outbreaks. Resurgences of the coronavirus in various regions, including where nations…