Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was elected World Health Organization director-general for a five-year term by WHO member states in May 2017. In doing so, he was the first WHO director-general elected from among multiple candidates by the World Health Assembly, and was the first person from the WHO Africa region to head the world’s leading public health agency. Prior to his election as director-general, Tedros held many leadership positions in global health, including as chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, chair of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, and co-chair of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Board. Following his studies, Tedros returned to Ethiopia to support the delivery of health services, first working as a field-level malariologist, before heading a regional health service and later serving in Ethiopia’s federal government for over a decade as minister of health and minister of foreign affairs.
