Harsh Vardhan is India’s nominee for lead role in WHO, takes over on Friday

As head of the 34-member Executive Board that is mandated to implement the decisions of the World Health Assembly, health minister Harsh Vardhan will have to work closely with Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Updated on: May 19, 2020, 21:40:58 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, who is leading the country’s battle against Covid-19 in the country, will be India’s nominee to be the next WHO Executive Board chairman, people familiar with the development told Hindustan Times.

Harsh Vardhan, an ENT surgeon by training, will replace Dr H Nakatani, who is the advisor for international affairs to Japan’s health minister. (Sanjeev Verma/HT File Photo)

A senior government official said the health minister would be elected at the World Health Organisation‘s Executive Board’s meeting on 22 May. The election is a procedural formality.

“It is not a full time assignment… But Dr Harsh Vardhan will be required to chair the executive board’s bi-annual meetings,” a senior government official told Hindustan Times.

The WHO’s South-East Asia group had unanimously decided last year that New Delhi would be elected to the executive board for a three-year-term beginning May. It was also decided at this meeting that New Delhi’s nominee would be the Executive Board chairman for the first year beginning Friday. The chairman’s post is held by rotation for one year among regional groups.

On Tuesday, the 194-nation World Health Assembly signed off on the proposal to appoint India’s nominee to the executive board. Former health minister JP Nadda had chaired a similar session of the WHA back in 2016.

Harsh Vardhan, an ENT surgeon by training, will replace Dr H Nakatani, who is the advisor for international affairs to Japan’s health minister.

As head of the 34-member Executive Board that is mandated to implement the decisions of the World Health Assembly, health minister Harsh Vardhan will have to work closely with Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who has lately been the punching bag for many countries led by the United States over the WHO’s initial response to Covid-19.

Harsh Vardhan, who will continue in the executive board after the one-year term as chairman ends, will also have a say in shortlisting the next WHO director general when Tedros Adhanom’s five-year-tenure ends in May 2021.

Earlier, the executive board would select the WHO director general and get its choice vetted by the health assembly. But this procedure was changed before Tedros Adhanom was appointed. The board is now required to shortlist candidates whose candidature is put before the World Health Assembly for election by a secret ballot.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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