The chief of the World Health Organization called the ongoing catastrophe in Ethiopia’s Tigray area “the worst disaster on Earth” and questioned aloud on Wednesday whether the lack of action by world leaders was related to the people of Tigray’s ethnicity.
According to Tedros, the 6 million people of Tigray have been “under siege” for the past 21 months and are basically cut off from the rest of the world. He asserted that the situation in Tigray was much worse and that the Ukraine conflict had the potential to send the world “sleepwalking into a nuclear war,” which would be “the mother of all crises.”
The situation brought on by the ongoing conflict in his native country, Tigray, is worse than any other humanitarian disaster in the world, according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is also an ethnic Tigrayan.
Tedros questioned in April whether racism was to blame for the world’s preponderance of attention on Russia’s war in Ukraine, even though he admitted the conflict had global repercussions.
Little humanitarian help was delivered after Tigray forces retook much of the area in June 2021, nearly a year after the conflict in Ethiopia broke out in November 2020. Though aid has increased significantly in recent months, it is generally regarded as being insufficient to fulfil the needs of the millions of people who are virtually stuck there.
“I haven’t heard in the last few months any head of state talking about the Tigray situation anywhere in the developed world. Anywhere. Why?” Tedros asked.
The WHO director has previously come out in support of Tigray.
After Tedros harshly criticised the war and humanitarian crisis in the nation, the government of Ethiopia wrote to the World Health Organization and accused him of misbehaviour. A COVID-19 vaccination campaign was only finally launched at the region’s flagship hospital in July, a sign of how isolated Tigray has been. This was an improvement over a months-long period of deprivation during which hospital staff members described running out of essential medications and attempting to treat wounds with warm salt water. In Tigray, it was the first COVID-19 vaccine programme.
