World Health Organization Gets First Leader from Africa

May 23, 2017

(Nature) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has its first head to hail from Africa. Ethiopia’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will take up the post of the agency’s director-general from 1 July – succeeding Margaret Chan – after winning a 23 May vote by WHO member states at the World Health Assembly, their annual gathering in Geneva, Switzerland. Tedros, 52, is a public health expert who has formerly been both a health minister and a foreign minister in Ethiopia’s government, and will lead the WHO for a 5-year term.