Two more senior WHO officials, Bruce Aylward and Ailan Li, who were among those dropped from WHO’s Senior Leadership Team during the first phase of an Agency shake-up, have now been appointed to leading roles elsewhere in the organisation, according to a memo from Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.   

Li, a Chinese national and former assistant director-general for UHC/Healthier Populations at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, has been appointed as WHO Representative to the Kingdom of Thailand, Tedros announced, in a message seen by Health Policy Watch.  

Aylward, formerly assistant director-general for the Division of Universal Health Coverage/Life Course, was appointed director of the WHO-World Bank Global Preparedness Monitoring Board in August, and will now also be coordinating the work on the UN80 Initiative, Tedros confirmed in the message, emailed to all staff on Friday. 

The new appointments complete the sweep of WHO’s 17 former senior management officials, now reduced to 12 as part of major cost-cutting moves triggered by the withdrawal of the United States from the organisation in January. The US retreat left a gaping $1.7 billion budget gap for the upcoming 2026-27 budget period. That has now been reduced to $1.05 billion due to a projected 25% reduction in WHO’s workforce next year. 

Three of six ADGs cut from senior leadership ranks actually left WHO 

The new senior leadership team includes four assistant director generals at headquarters, a Chef de Cabinet and Chief Scientist, as well as Tedros himself. The directors of five WHO Regional Offices (not including the head of the Pan American Health Organisation, counted separately) also hold an equivalent ranking, for total of 12 such posts.

Of the six ADGs who were cut from team in May, three have actually left the organisation, including Samira Asma, formerly ADG for Data, Analytics and Delivery, now with the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation; Jérome Salomon, ADG for Universal Health Coverage who left WHO in September; and Health Emergencies Executive Director Mike Ryan, who retired in September.      

The recent appointments mean that three others, including Li, Aylward and former ADG for External Relations Catherine Boehme have now moved into other roles, with Boehme serving as “Officer in Charge” of WHO’s South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO).  Tedros placed SEARO’s Regional Director, Saima Wazed on leave on 11 July, after the Bangladeshi government filed two cases against her for alleged fraud, forgery and misuse of power, also issuing a warrant for her arrest. No return date has so far been announced.

See related story: 

Controversial WHO Regional Director Placed on Leave

Former HQ Directors also named to lead WHO country offices 

In his message Friday, Tedros also named a number of other former department directors and team heads at headquarters to head country offices in the global organisation, including:  

• Indrajit Hazarika, formerly Senior Public Health Officer, of Country Strategy and Support at HQ,  as WHO Representative to the Republic of Angola.  
• Ann Maria Lindstrand, formerly Unit Head, Essential Programme on Immunisation in the Health Emergencies Division, as  WHO Representative to the Republic of Cabo Verde.  
• Dr Pavel Ursu,  formerly Director of the Department of Delivery for Impact at headquarters in Geneva, as WHO Representative to the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 
• Dr Michel Yao, formerly the Director of the Department of Strategic Health Operations, will become the WHO Representative to the Republic of Senegal.

In 2021, Yao as well as another senior WHO official, were named in an alleged cover-up of allegations of sexual abuse brought against WHO field staff and consultants responding to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They were later cleared by an UN investigations panel.  

Nedret Emiroglu, a former Director for Country Readiness Strengthening in the Health Emergencies Division, was meanwhile named to head the WHO Secretariat for the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG), which is negotiating further provisions of the WHO Pandemic Agreement approved in May – most notably a proposed system for Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS).

Staff Reductions to date 

In a press briefing last week, Tedros publicly acknowledged that the organisation plans to reduce WHO staff worldwide by an estimated 2371 positions by mid-2026, shedding about 25% of the workforce, which numbered 9,466 at the end of December 2024, and just under that as of 1 January.  

Around 1,089 staff are being shed through what WHO described as “natural attrition.” This includes  retirements, early retirement, and the non-renewal of short-term staff contracts that expire. In addition, another 1,282 long and short-term posts have been abolished outright, according to statements at the presser and the earlier briefing to WHO member states.  That should bring WHO’s global staff headcount down to about 7,360 professional and administrative positions by mid-2026. 

Of those cuts, some 505 staff had left WHO by end September, WHO human resource records show; that count was confirmed by a WHO spokesperson.

“A large number of staff are exiting at the end of December, three-months notice while notified in September,” the spokesperson told Health Policy Watch. “And another large number will leave in June 2026, i.e.  the ones with reassignment rights.”

In terms of D1 and D2 directors, whose numbers nearly doubled in the first six years of Tedros’ administration, costing the organisation nearly $100 million annually, some 21 Directors’ positions had been eliminated as of 30 September. That brings the number of directors worldwide down from a peak of 188 at end 2024 to 167 in Q3 2025.  

That still leaves another 30 D1 and D2 posts to be eliminated by June 2026, mostly at headquarters. The massive reorganisation announced in April and May, slashed the number of departments and directors at headquarters by more than half – from 76 to 34 positions). 

The reason those reductions haven’t yet been reflected in the HR records is simple, WHO says.

“Some directors who are sitting on positions that have been abolished have up to 6 months reassignment [rights] plus a 3-month notice period,” a WHO spokesperson said, “hence they still appear in the Q3 report. The target remains for June 30, 2026.” 

How will cuts translate into budget savings?

Despite the painful plans to cut more 2,371 staff worldwide by June 2026, a projected funding gap remains of $1.05 billion, according to the director general’s last report to member states in November.

And the degree to which cuts in rank-and-file, as well as high level positions, will lead to actual savings remains to be seen. 

WHO’s November reports to member state did not offer any detailed analysis of projected savings that would be gained through the reductions by staff grade or office location. Even less detail provided on the status, conditions and costs of non-staff contract holders – about which there is no reporting even of pay grades or geographic base, let alone gender and age. That’s despite the fact that WHO’s non-staff’s headcount of  7582 (full-time equivalents) in 2024 was approaching that of actual staff numbers (9466) for that year.  WHO officials say that the lack of more detailed reporting on non-staff contracts,  is linked to legal and ethical issues.

“WHO does not systematically capture, aggregate or publish individual-level information (such as grade equivalence, age, gender or demographic background) for non-staff contractual arrangements,” a WHO spokesperson told Health Policy Watch. “Doing so would raise legal, ethical and data-protection concerns, as WHO is not the employer of these individuals and does not have a mandate to collect or process such personal data beyond what is strictly required for contractual and financial compliance.”

At the highest levels of WHO staff, meanwhile, some directors whose departments at headquarters were abolished remained in the organisation as a heads of unit, which typically carries a top-level professional grade of P6.  

In the UN grading system, the salaries of D1 directors and P6 professionals are virtually identical. 

And some former department heads now running units have even clung to their old titles, regardless of the formalities. 

In an email invitation to colleagues for a late November reception at the WHO canteen, the former Director of the Department of Public Health and Migration (PHM), who is now technically a unit head, couldn’t resist signing the invite with his old title as well: “Head of Special Initiative on Health and Migration (Director). Division of Universal Health Coverage and Healthier Populations.” 

Observed one WHO staff member: “This kind of thing is all over the place.  As for cost reduction, NADA!”

Image Credits: WHO HR database , WHO , WHO Workforce Data, December 13 2024, WHO .