China has nominated Song Li to run the WHO. Here is how the job is actually decided

China has nominated health official Song Li as a candidate to lead the World Health Organization, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, confirming an earlier Reuters report. “If elected, China believes Song Li will help play a more active role in improving health and wellbeing of all mankind,” spokesman Mao Ning told reporters, according to Reuters.

That is the news. The rest of this piece is the machinery, because the machinery decides the outcome.

Who votes, and when

The WHO’s director-general is appointed by the World Health Assembly, the body of all member states, following a nomination process run by the Executive Board, the WHO’s own election page says.

• Nominations. The incumbent, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, invited member states to propose candidates on 24 April, with a deadline of 24 September, Health Policy Watch reported. Any person may be nominated by a member state. A candidate’s name is made public only if the nominating state asks for it; six candidates had been publicly declared after the deadline closed, according to Health Policy Watch.
• Shortlist. The Executive Board, 34 members, screens the candidates at its 160th session in January 2027 and nominates up to three for the Assembly.
• Vote. The Eightieth World Health Assembly, due in May 2027, appoints the director-general from among those nominees by secret ballot. The WHO’s FAQ says the secret ballot is intended to let member states choose freely and independently. Every member state registered for the session may vote, except those whose voting rights are suspended under Article 7 of the WHO Constitution.
• Start. The new term begins on 16 August 2027.

The African precedent

Tedros was elected at the Seventieth World Health Assembly in May 2017 and was, in the WHO’s own words, “the first person from the WHO African Region to head the world’s leading public health agency.” He was re-elected on 24 May 2022 after the Executive Board nominated him at its 150th session that January. He cannot stand again; the election page describes the 2027 appointment as the choice of his successor.

That makes 2027 the first open race since an African held the post. Whether an African candidate is among the six publicly declared is a matter of record on the WHO’s prospective-candidate page, which nominating states control; this piece does not speculate beyond what that page and the sources above state.

Why a Nigerian reader should care this week

Two items on today’s Brief run through the same building in Geneva. The WHO is the agency asking Russia for answers on a suspected plague case in Irkutsk, and it is the agency whose regional office and Africa CDC are the counterparts for Kenya’s first Ebola case. The person who runs it from August 2027 sets the tone for both kinds of emergency, and 47 of the votes in that May ballot belong to the WHO African Region’s member states.

Kairos Explains is scripted and graphics-led. Every claim on screen carries its source in the receipts below.