SCIENCE sciencemag.org 14 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6479 733port. In a call to Science afterward, Tedros
defended China’s actions. “We appreciate
the interventions they are taking,” he said.
“They are doing it not only for their own
country, but for the rest of the world.” He
said a review at some later time would as-
sess whether China’s actions were evidence-
based and reasonable. “We don’t want
to rush now to blaming, we can only ad-
vise them that whatever actions they take
should be proportionate to the problems,
and that’s what they assured us.”
For some, that strategy verges on ap-
peasement. For instance, Tedros has joined
the Chinese government in criticizing other
countries for closing their doors to travel-
ers from China, but has remained silent
about the fact that China has closed off en-
tire cities and penned in tens of millions of
people, a measure some scientists believe
may not help much and infringes on basic
human rights. “I absolutely believe these
measures should be called out, both for their
human rights implication and their very
limited public health impact,” says
Alexandra Phelan, a global health
law expert at Georgetown’s Center for
Global Health Science and Security.
But, she adds, China’s cooperation is
so critical that she can see why Tedros
might not speak out. “I just worry
what it means going forward.”
Some go further. An online petition
asking Tedros to step down has gar-
nered more than 300,000 signatures.
But Jha disagrees. “To take on China
in some aggressive way in the context
of this, I’m not sure that would have
been helpful,” he says. “I think Tedros
has been pretty masterful at pushing
China, engaging with China.” Farrar
says China has done reasonably wellso far in a difficult situation, but the coun-
try should release more basic epidemio-
logical data and viral sequences quickly. “To
me, those are the two big gaps because those
two allow you to track the epidemic,” he says.
Tedros urges patience because China is over-
stretched. “So we get some information, we
may not get other information. It may not be
complete. But we understand that.”
Still, the epidemic has clearly shown the
limits of the agency’s influence. The 30 Jan-
uary declaration of a Public Health Emer-
gency of International Concern (PHEIC)
is a case in point. Widely covered in me-
dia and perceived as an important step—
although critics say it came too late—the
declaration is largely symbolic. A PHEIC
allows WHO to recommend for or against
travel restrictions, and countries are sup-
posed to follow its lead. But many, includ-
ing the United States, have ignored Tedros’s
recommendation against travel restrictions
and have closed their borders to travelers
from China. A PHEIC “gives more moral au-thority to WHO,” Jha says—but the agency
has no power of enforcement.IN OCTOBER 2018, on a stage at the World
Health Summit in Berlin, Tedros was asked
about the third of the United Nations’s
17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
for 2030: “Ensure healthy lives and promote
well-being for all at all ages.” He told the audi-
ence a story about Hassab al Karim, a boy he
had met a few days before in a cardiac clinic
in Khartoum, Sudan, that provides free care.
Hassab had just had surgery for rheumatic
heart disease. “This 13-year-old boy could
not have survived even a few years, but now
I think he is hopeful that he will survive into
adulthood and beyond,” Tedros said. As he
described how Hassab had smiled at him,
his voice faltered and he stopped for a few
moments. “So for me,” he said, wiping away
tears, “for me Hassab al Karim is SDG-3.”
It wasn’t the first time Tedros had cried
in public, and some observers scoff at his
displays of emotion. To others, this is his
strength: that even as head of an in-
ternational bureaucracy touching bil-
lions of lives, he is keenly aware of
individuals. He talks easily to medi-
cal students, health care workers in
the field, and patients. He frequently
mentions his brother, who died
young, Tedros believes of measles.
That loss taught him to see individu-
als when he reads another stagger-
ing death statistic, he says.
“Empathy is very important for
Tedros. He is a very emotional man,”
Kickbusch says. It’s too early to
judge whether his tenure will end up
a success, but one thing is certain,
she says: “He is in it with his heart
PHOTOS: (TOP TO BOTTOM) KYODO VIA AP IMAGES; WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION/CHRISTOPHER BLACK and his soul.” j
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (left), who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on 28 January, has praised China for its efforts to control the new coronavirus.Tedros greets Ebola response staff—using an “elbow bump” instead of
a handshake to reduce the risk of infection—in the DRC in June 2019.Published by AAAS