“’What he could have done is say, ‘These are the data coming out of China but we’re unable to independently verify it,’” he said. “That would have been what we would have liked to have seen in an ideal world.”
“WHO showed appreciation for China’s work because they cooperated on issues we had sought support on, including isolating the virus and sharing the genome sequence immediately, which allowed countries all around the world to develop testing kits,” said Bernhard Schwartländer, Tedros’ chef de cabinet, in a statement to POLITICO on Thursday.
‘Mixed personality’
It’s not the first time Tedros finds himself in risky diplomatic territory. The long-time civil servant rose through the ranks of a repressive regime in Ethiopia while staying distant enough from its abuses to remain acceptable on the global stage.
During his time as a public official back home, Ethiopia — and Tedros — proved skillful at balancing competing interests, be it Western donors, the Chinese government or international aid organizations.
In Ethiopia, the U.S. government is currently sending food aid to famine-hit regions near the Somali border. And women’s health clinics, some of which provide abortions under the many exceptions to the country’s ban, get a boost from American billionaires, including Bill Gates and Ted Turner.
But in Addis Ababa, a capital of proliferating skyscrapers, fading Art Deco apartment blocks and well-kept shantytowns, the brand-new commuter train connecting suburbs in the north and south was built by China. As was the space-age headquarters of the African Union, seated in Addis, a reflection of Beijing’s heavy economic and diplomatic investment in the continent.
As health minister from 2005 to 2012, Tedros simultaneously courted and stood up to donors from the West, leveraging cash for medicines to build a sweeping health network that’s the envy of Africa. In campaigning for his current job, he built a political support base outside the bloc of wealthy countries that usually pull the strings of U.N. agencies, while maintaining cordial relations with G20 leaders, including — until even a month or so ago — the U.S.
In Ethiopia, Tedros is viewed as a “mixed personality,” said Getnet Tadele, a professor specializing in the sociology of health at Addis Ababa University.
He’s credited with major improvements in access to basic health care, and his embrace of reproductive rights helped make Ethiopia a darling of rich Western countries and the humanitarian philanthropies that echo their interests.
On the other hand, he was a member in good standing of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the former ruling party, including serving as foreign minister from 2012 to 2016. The regime has been condemned by human rights organizations for torturing political dissidents, tossing journalists in jail and cutting off regions home to opposition factions.
“He was part of that coterie that was really creating a lot of fear in the country,” said Tadele.
Cholera cover-up
Tedros has a world-famous health record — but it’s stained by accusations that he participated in a cover-up of his own.
There’s little dispute about Tedros’ pivotal role in improving access to basic care. Under Ethiopia’s so-called community health extension program, Tedros helped train and employ 38,000 health workers, providing better care for pregnant women and people suffering from HIV infections, tuberculosis and malaria.
Tedros was also a key figure in pushing through Ethiopia’s abortion law, which even today is credited with being one of the most progressive in Africa despite deep-rooted opposition from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
“He is a very technical person, research-orientated,” said Saba Kidanemariam, the country director for Ipas Ethiopia, an NGO working to offer access to abortions and contraception.
In her work on women’s health services, Kidanemariam was witness to Tedros’ rise through the ranks of the TPLF. She met him regularly while he was health minister and said that Tedros always put a lot of energy into equipping regional health bureaus with more resources and staff.
At the same time, “he is a very good PR agent for himself,” she added. “He can relate with anyone.”
Tedros proved especially adept at using different streams of development funding, such as the Global Fund and the U.S. AIDS program Pepfar, to bankroll his network of community health workers.
“I will follow your rules, your procedures, your processes, but at the end I will decide how all these programs come together,” Kazatchkine, who as Global Fund director first encountered Tedros around 2008, recalled hearing.
While he was health minister, Tedros was accused of downplaying a series of cholera outbreaks, accusations that are reminiscent of those being hedged at China and its early stance during the coronavirus crisis.
Money was pouring into the Ethiopian health care system — from the U.S., the U.K. and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That meant Ethiopia had a reputation to maintain — and outbreaks of cholera, a potentially fatal intestinal infection fueled by poor sanitation, didn’t fit.
Unable to get the disease under control, Tedros is accused by watchdogs of trying to minimize the outbreaks by refusing to call them anything other than “acute watery diarrhea,” or AWD.
“If you can’t manage disease outbreaks then that’s in direct correlation to your legitimacy, not to mention implications for tourism,” said Edward Brown, Ethiopia’s country director for World Vision. “Trying to control the narrative rather than tell the truth, that was the stain of the AWD thing.”
Secret ballot
Tedros’ time in the Ethiopian government was also a period in which China was emerging as another major donor. In 2012, the year the Chinese-built African Union headquarters was inaugurated, Tedros was appointed foreign minister.
The aim was to have him in “a position as a diplomat to leverage China,” said Tadele. “It was a deliberate move.”
During his time as foreign minister, Tedros regularly met senior officials from China, often traveling to Beijing to carry on the blueprint of leveraging financial aid and building headline projects, such as industrial parks, started by former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
It’s a relationship that would prove useful when he stood for chief of the WHO.
Until Tedros’ election, the WHO chief had been selected by the organization’s 32-member executive board. The year of his candidacy marked the first time each member of the United Nations would have a chance to vote — offering a voice to a wide array of governments from developing countries such as Ethiopia.
The vote was a secret one, but Beijing’s backing was seen as key for Tedros’ victory over his British opponent, David Nabarro.
Source: politico.com
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