WHO’s Sickening Honor

In the face of mass condemnation, World Health Organization chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has rescinded the goodwill ambassadorship he bestowed on Zimbabwe’s bloody and corrupt president, Robert Mugabe. But that he offered it at all is a sign of just how perverse the United Nations bureaucracy has grown.

The WHO director-general announced the appointment at a conference last Wednesday, claiming Zimbabwe’s president could influence his peers for better health care and praising the country’s supposed commitment to “universal health coverage.”

Mugabe, sadly, does have influence: He was head of the African Union when it united to push Tedros, an Ethiopian techno- crat, to take over at WHO. But he’s a cancer.

Two generations ago, Mugabe inspired many around the world — an anti-imperialist who fought successfully to end white minority rule in then-Rhodesia.

But in the decades since, he’s gradually crushed all dissenting voices, massacred tens of thousands (overwhelmingly blacks) and ruined the nation’s economy, leaving it even more impoverished than when he first took power in 1980.

Mugabe has “turned the breadbasket of Africa — and its health system — into a basket-case,” notes UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer. “The notion that the UN should now spin this country as a great supporter of health is, frankly, sickening.”