Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

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