[Exclusive] Q&A With WHO DG Candidate Gevorg Tamamyan

Readers,

The World Health Organization is at the cusp of a transition. Starting today, we will be bringing you views from the candidates in the race to lead the WHO.

We sent ten questions to all the candidates, and have requested them to respond in writing, sharing their visions, hopes and ambition for the WHO. Some will speak to us, others may not. We will bring you what we see.

These questions were framed and shaped by this community of highly engaged and sophisticated readers, that constitute our audience. The questions touch on areas including priorities for the WHO, measures on safeguarding science, governance, financing, tackling donors, streamlining operations, standing up to bullies (or not), parsing through political fights, you get the drift...

Presenting the first of these series: a comprehensive interview with Gevorg Tamamyan, an oncologist backed by Botswana. We hope this helps our readership understand not only how candidates are evaluating the role to lead the WHO, but to also understand how they assess the terrain they will govern, if elected. This is revealing, and goes beyond public statements that they have shared. (These are verbatim, we have not changed a word.)

We are grateful to the candidates for their time and willingness to share this with us. This is an important high-stakes election that deserves public engagement. (Our requests to candidates in the just concluded Global Fund race, went unanswered, and not acknowledged.)

In case you missed it, read a detailed guest essay published earlier, on what it would take to lead the WHO.

This is an exciting time to be reporting on global health in Geneva, but also resource intensive. Support us? You won't be disappointed. For we share not only information, but insights that frame the information. Reader-funded journalism brings greater scrutiny to this election. Join the community.

I. THE FILES SERIES

Art work by Julia Dötzer, Geneva Health Files

EXCLUSIVE: Q&A With WHO DG Candidate Gevorg Tamamyan

Introductory question: your specific experience so far that would help WHO

I have spent my career building the things WHO exists to make possible: a national pediatric cancer service, a research institute, a charity that covers every child, a global knowledge platform, and regional networks that span continents.

I built them in a small country affected by wars, with limited resources, where you learn quickly that the problem is rarely science. The problem is access, equity and delivery.

At 31 I was given the opportunity to consolidate Armenia's fragmented pediatric cancer services into one national center. We standardized care, started the country's first pediatric oncology fellowship, mentored a new generation of specialists, and survival rates rose to approximately 80%. With City of Smile, we made sure no family in Armenia pays for a child's cancer diagnosis or treatment. That is what "universal health coverage" looks like when it is real, and I know what it takes to get there.

I co-founded OncoDaily and built it from zero into one of the world's largest oncology communication platforms, reaching millions. I have led organizations across the public, private and non-profit sectors, and I know how to make impact visible, which WHO can do much better.

Internationally, I served as the President of International Society of Pediatric Oncology Asia Contiental Branch (SIOP Asia) and of the POEM Group, which unites 110 centers across 28 countries, and as Co-Chair of the St. Jude Global Alliance regional committee for the WHO European Region, which unites 13 European countries. At SIOP Asia we created around 45 country ambassador roles in two years and the engagement grew significantly across the whole contient making Asia not only the largest, but also one of the most active parts of SIOP. I have studied and worked in seven countries across Asia, Europe and North America, and I have worked on cancer care in conflict settings, including through the Institute of Cancer and Crisis.

I am not an insider of Geneva, and I do not pretend to be. I have never tried to be the smartest person in the room. My job has always been to find the best people, empower them, and hold them accountable. That is the job of the Director-General. What I bring is the experience of a builder who has delivered results where the odds were against delivery, and who measures success by the lives changed, not the documents produced.

The Future of WHO

1. How do you view WHO's role in a changing global health governance architecture?

WHO should lead, not compete. Architecture begins with who we are building for, and we are building for people: the patient, the nurse, the community health worker, the family that should not have to sell its house to buy a medicine.

The architecture has changed. Funding has contracted, two Member States have withdrawn, and countries are rightly demanding ownership of their own health agenda.

In this landscape WHO has four strengths no one else has: global legitimacy, normative authority, convening power, and neutrality in a crisis. These make WHO the natural orchestrator of global action, not another implementer competing for the same grants.

In practice this means three things. First, WHO does fewer things, fully. Together with Member States we will agree on a limited number of flagship priorities where measurable global impact is possible, while protecting the normative and technical functions that only WHO can perform. Scaling back is not a unilateral decision of the Director-General; it must be done transparently with Member States, because that is how trust is restored and flexible financing unlocked.

Second, WHO turns "working with all stakeholders" into a system that delivers: a tiered partnership model with a small number of accountable implementation partners, a broader network of normative and advocacy partners, and an open civil society platform, each with clear roles and measurable outcomes. We will be inclusive but disciplined, and not afraid to say no when impact or equity are compromised.

Third, WHO stands with countries, not above them. The Accra Reset is right: country ownership, costed national plans, local and regional manufacturing, regional laboratory networks. The Global South is where innovation is born, not only where it lands. Scientists in Botswana were among the first to identify Omicron. WHO's job is to make that capacity the norm.

Health is not a bloc. A WHO that is faster, more focused and closer to the people it serves is the one the world will keep choosing to fund and to join.

2. How will you make WHO more secure financially?

Financial security comes from three things: deliver visible results, focus on fewer things, and open a new source of flexible money that does not depend on the political mood.

Results first. Donors do not fund invisibility. Every year the Director-General, ADGs and Regional Directors will present a public report card to the Executive Board on progress against agreed metrics, including what was not delivered and why. I did this every 15 February as head of our national center, and it changed how partners trusted us. Flexible funding follows demonstrated impact.

Fewer things, done fully. Unfunded mandates weaken execution and weaken trust. With Member States we will match priorities to resources transparently. A smaller, fully funded portfolio delivered end to end is worth more to a finance ministry than a long list of half-funded resolutions.

A WHO Foundation built for mass giving. In its first five years the WHO Foundation mobilised about $215 million. I propose to turn it into a mass public-giving instrument, the way St. Jude raises billions every year from ordinary people. The target: ten million people giving $100 a year, or $10 a month, so that by 2032 the Foundation contributes $250 million a year in unearmarked support, on the way to $1 billion a year by 2037. We proved this model works with City of Smile in Armenia. It comes with full transparency on administration costs, donor acquisition and net transfers to WHO. In parallel, the Foundation should begin building an endowment so that WHO's core is never again hostage to a single budget cycle.

And the basics. Universal membership, with the United States and Argentina back and paying assessed contributions. Continued progress on the assessed-contribution increases Member States have already agreed. And an organization that treats staff time as seriously as money.