Ethiopia's Tedros elected new WHO chief

GENEVA: Ethiopia's Tedros Adhanom was elected as the new head of the powerful World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, vowing to shake up an agency seen as needing major reform.

The former Ethiopian health minister beat out Britain's David Nabarro and Sania Nishtar of Pakistan in the race to lead the UN's public health body.

The result was confirmed in a statement by the WHO after three rounds of voting on Tuesday.

Tedros, a 52-year-old malaria specialist, will take over on July 1, succeeding Margaret Chan, a Hong Kong native whose decadelong tenure was marred by the agency's fiercely criticised response to the Ebola epidemic in west Africa.

In his final pitch to memberstates before ballots were cast, Tedros vowed to staff the WHO with "a world-class workforce" while introducing strict accountability measures, which critics say have been sorely lacking at the Geneva-based agency.

He listed delivering universal healthcare, especially to the world's most impoverished, as his top priority.

Tedros said he refused "to accept that people should die because they are poor."

The WHO is perhaps the most influential UN agency, charged with emergency response and shaping baseline policies for treatment of major health challenges.