GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation (WHO)
should overturn its decision to appoint of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe
as a goodwill ambassador, global health leaders said on Saturday, describing
the move as unjustifiable and wrong.
The British government said Mugabe’s appointment was
“surprising and disappointing” and added that it risked overshadowing the WHO’s
global work.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the
appointment at a high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in
Uruguay on Wednesday.
The meeting was attended by Mugabe, 93. He is blamed in the
West for destroying his country’s economy and numerous human rights abuses
during his 37 years leading the country as either president or prime minister.
In a speech, Tedros praised Zimbabwe as “a country that
places universal health coverage and health promotion at the centre of its
policies to provide health care to all”.
The former Ethiopian health and foreign minister, who was
elected last May as WHO’s first African director-general, added: “Today I am
also honoured to announce that President Mugabe has agreed to serve as a
goodwill ambassador on NCDs for Africa to influence his peers in his region to
prioritize NCDs.”
But the NCD Alliance, which represents 28 international
health groups seeking to combat chronic diseases, said it was “shocked and
deeply concerned” to hear of the appointment, given Mugabe’s “long track record
of human rights violations”.
Jeremy Farrar, a leading global health specialist and
director of the Wellcome Trust charity also said the decision was “deeply
disappointing and wrong” and called on
Tedros to be brave and reverse it.
“Robert Mugabe fails in every way to represent the values WHO
should stand for and those that Dr Tedros has stood for since becoming DG and
has done over many years,” Farrar said. “Brave leaders are willing to listen,
rethink and overturn bad decisions, this is one such case,” he said.
WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said the WHO chief had made
the move seeking broad support for the agency’s work.
“Tedros has frequently talked of his determination to build a
global movement to promote high-level political leadership for health,” he said
by e-mail.
Human rights activists also criticised the move.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based group UN
Watch described the choice by WHO, a United Nations agency as “sickening”.
“The government of Robert Mugabe has brutalized human rights
activists, crushed democracy dissidents, and turned the breadbasket of Africa —
and its health system — into a basket-case,” he said.
He noted that Mugabe himself had travelled to Singapore for
medical treatment three times this year rather than in his homeland.
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