World Health Organization Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Never Stops Worrying

I am afraid for Dr. Tedros’ safety. The World Health Organization Director-General and I are walking from the WHO’s midtown-Manhattan offices to the nearby U.N. campus, where Tedros is participating in the U.N. General Assembly. As we cross avenues amid a chorus of honking horns, Tedros is so intent on answering my questions, rarely breaking eye contact, that he appears not to notice traffic lights changing and cyclists whizzing past at alarming proximity. His staff and I breathe a collective sigh of relief when he arrives at the U.N. unscathed. It should come as no surprise that the man at the helm of the world’s leading global health organization–after a decade serving as Minister of Health, then Foreign Affairs in Ethiopia–is laser-focused on the issues that keep the public-health community up at night: child and maternal mortality; climate change; infectious-disease outbreaks; emergency preparedness; and, most of all, that “half of the world’s population doesn’t have access to essential services.” That’s why Tedros is committed to the WHO’s goal of helping every country implement universal health coverage by 2030, calling on every nation, no matter how rich or poor, to put an additional 1% of its gross domestic product toward primary health care. “All roads lead to universal health coverage,” Tedros tells me before we leave the WHO’s offices. “It’s when we have strong health sy...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change health World Health Organization Source Type: news