An online petition demanding the resignation of the director-general of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has now gained over a million signatures.

The petition, posted on Change.org, a platform for online petitions, was created by a Torontonian hairstylist by the name of Osuka Yip, and collected 200,000 signatures within the first three days.

It charged Tedros with being “not fit for his role as WHO Director General” and called for his immediate resignation.

It also charged Tedros with leading the WHO away from political neutrality, taking statistics provided to him by the Chinese government and excluding Taiwan for political reasons.

Missteps and blunders

Critics say the WHO’s bungling of the response to the coronavirus began right from the start. On January 10, when it first noted the outbreak of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, the WHO repeated China’s talking points that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and recommendedno restrictions on flights from Wuhan.

Three days later, when Thailand reported its first imported case of the coronavirus, the WHO continued to reiterate there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission and recommended no restrictions.

By January 23, when the coronavirus had now emerged in several countries around the world, Tedros admitted that there was human-to-human transmission in China, but still insisted there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China. Praising the Chinese government for its “cooperation and transparency”, Tedros rejected calls from the international community to declare a global health emergency – a move he was forced to make just seven days later.

Even then, he was full of effusive praise for China in his address, congratulating China for “setting a new standard” and its “commitment to transparency”.

As the outbreak continued to expand, reaching 37 countries around the world by over the next few weeks, Tedros once again rejected calls to declare a pandemic on February 25, saying the careless use of the word offered “no tangible benefit”.

By the time he made his u-turn two weeks later to declare a global pandemic, the outbreak had already infected 118,000 people in 114 countries, and killed more than 4,000.

A spotted past?

While Tedros is generally highly regarded for his stint as Ethiopia’s health minister between 2005 and 2012, detractors accuse him of covering up three separate cholera outbreaks in the country in 2006, 2009 and 2011.

Global health officials say Ethiopia has a long history of covering up cholera outbreaks, referring to the disease instead as acute watery diarrhea (AWD).

Testing for the bacteria that causes cholera is simple and more aid could have been delivered to Ethiopia had the health ministry been more upfront.

When these issues surfaced in the run-up to the 2017 election for the director-general position at the WHO, Tedros brushed them off as a “smear campaign”.

With China campaigning behind the scenes for him, Tedros went on to win the election, becoming the first non-physician and the first African to lead the WHO.

Shortly afterwards, Tedros announced he was choosing Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe as WHO Goodwill Ambassador to tackle non-communicable diseases for Africa.

The appointment was widely criticised, not least because Mugabe was often traveling to Singapore for medical treatment instead of using Zimbabwe’s own health system, and Tedros eventually had no choice but to rescind the appointment.