World Health Organisation director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is set to visit Nepal from April 21 to 23 at the invitation of Minister for Health and Population Birodh Khatiwada.

Officials at the Health Ministry said that the director general himself is interested in visiting the country to see its progress in the Covid-19 vaccination.

“We have also been carrying out typhoid vaccination with support from the UN-health agency, which is being held successfully,” Dr Roshan Pokhrel, secretary for Health and Population, told the Post. “We have been doing good in the vaccination sector. The UN chief Dr Tedros accepted our invitation to visit Nepal.”

The Health Ministry said that Dr Tedros will visit Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital, National Public Health Laboratory and a primary health care centre during his stay in Nepal.

Tedros will also pay a courtesy call on President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.

“We will arrange his visits to various places to show him our activities and progress,” said Birodh Khatiwada, minister for Health and Population. “We will also analyse the progress we made despite the Covid-19 pandemic and its impacts.”

Officials at the Health Ministry concede that even if Nepal’s Covid-19 vaccination was a successful drive, the coronavirus pandemic affected the overall progress made in the healthcare sector. It would take years to recover some of the progress while the country is not positioned to achieve some of the Sustainable Development Goal targets.

The UN health agency has provided technical as well as financial support to Nepal’’s health care programmes, including in vaccination and maternal and child health nutrition, among others.

Officials hope that the UN health body could help assess the impact of the pandemic on the healthcare sector and make recommendations and offer assistance for recovery.

Tedros’ visit comes ahead of the 75th World Health Assembly set to be held in May 2022, which will elect a new director general. Incumbent director general Dr Tedros is eligible for a second five-year term.

“The visit by the WHO director general will be purely goodwill,” said Dr Dipendra Raman Singh, director general at the Department of Health Services. “The UN health agency has been supporting us in many programmes, including the strengthening of our health care services.”

An official at the Health Ministry said that Sambhu Acharya, director of Country Cooperation and Collaboration with the UN System, will be accompanying Tedros during the visit.

Nepal has proposed Acharya as a candidate for the chief of the WHO South-East Asia region. Election of the WHO’s regional governing body committee is scheduled to be held in 2023.

Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh currently oversees the South-East Asia region from the WHO’s New Delhi office.