Dr Harsh Vardhan to be the Next Executive Board Chairman of WHO
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Union
Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, will be India’s nominee to be the next WHO
Executive Board chairman. Dr Vardhan is leading the country’s battle against
Covid-19.
“The Union Health Minister will be
elected at the World Health Organization’s Executive Board’s meeting on May 22,
which is election is a procedural formality”, a senior government official
said.
“Although, it’s not a full time
assignment, but Dr Vardhan will have to chair the executive board’s bi-annual
meetings”, the officer said.
The WHO’s South-East Asia group had
unanimously decided last year that New Delhi would be elected to the executive
board for a three-year-term beginning May. It was also decided at this meeting
that New Delhi’s nominee would be the Executive Board chairman for the first
year beginning Friday. The chairman’s post is held by rotation for one year
among regional groups.
Om May 19, 2020, altogether 194-nation
World Health Assembly (WHA) signed off on the proposal to appoint India’s
nominee to the executive board. In 2016, the former health minister and the
incumbent BJP President, JP Nadda, had chaired similar session of the WHA.
Harsh Vardhan, an ENT surgeon by
training, will replace Dr H Nakatani, who is the advisor for international
affairs to Japan’s health minister.
As head of the 34-member Executive Board
that is mandated to implement the decisions of the World Health Assembly,
health minister Harsh Vardhan will have to work closely with Director General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who has lately been the punching bag for many
countries led by the United States over the WHO’s initial response to Covid-19.
Harsh Vardhan, who will continue in the
executive board after the one-year term as chairman ends, will also have a say
in shortlisting the next WHO director general when Tedros Adhanom’s
five-year-tenure ends in May 2021. Earlier, the executive board would select
the WHO director general and get its choice vetted by the health assembly. But
this procedure was changed before Tedros Adhanom was appointed.
