The WHO has announced Tanzania’s Dr Moahamed Yakub Janabi as the new African Region nominee for regional director – after a special meeting of the WHO African Regional Committee on Sunday – to replace fellow Tanzanian, RD-elect Dr Faustine Ndugulile, who died suddenly in November last year.
The WHO Executive Board will be asked to approve Janabi’s nomination at their meeting just after next week’s World Health Assembly, clearing the way for his formal appointment by WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Janabi beat three other candidates in secret voting by the committee, after a series of presentations and interviews of the four candidates at Sunday’s meeting. They included candidates proposed by Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Guinea, reports Health-e News.
A senior health adviser to Tanzania’s late President and its present head of state, Samia Hassan, Janabi is a cardiologist and the former executive director of Tanzania’s largest hospital.
Born in 1962, his career spans more than three decades of work in clinical and policy settings, from the early days of the HIV epidemic to his role today as presidential advisor.
His first priority as regional director would be achieving universal health coverage for the African region, reducing the enormous health expenses that cause financial hardship, he said.
Janabi was involved in HIV vaccine trials in Tanzania and Mozambique in the early 2000s, and later, public health advocacy that convinced Tanzania’s then-President to get a public HIV test.
In 2021, he supported Tanzania’s new President, Samia Hassan, in devising a new, Covid-19 vaccination strategy. Hassan took over after the death in March 2021 of then-President John Magufuli, a Covid vaccine sceptic, who ultimately apparently succumbed to the virus himself.
Janabi founded the Jakaya Kikwete Heart Institute in 2014, which he claimed achieved a “95% reduction in overseas heart disease referrals” within five years of its founding.
He said other priorities would include supporting larger fixed contributions to WHO from member states, boosting domestic financing for health systems – “through blended financing, private-public partnerships and solidarity levies”: tackling infectious diseases as well as non-communicable diseases, and antimicrobial resistance, and strengthening local production of diagnostic, therapeutics and vaccines “by leveraging the pandemic agreement” – the new accord expected to be approved at this year’s WHA.
Janabi, once confirmed by WHO’s Executive Board and formally appointed by the DG, will step into the shoes of the late RD-elect, Nduguilile, who died on 27 November last year at 55, while receiving medical treatment in India.
Ndugulile had been elected as the WHO Africa regional director in August 2024 and was scheduled to begin his term in February 2025. His death led to a special session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in January 2025 to decide on a new election process.
Health-e News article – New WHO Regional Director Nominated by African Member States (Open access)
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