LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization has fired its Western Pacific director after the Associated Press reported last year that dozens of staff accused him of racist, abusive and inappropriate conduct that allegedly may have undermined the agency’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In an email sent to employees on Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that Dr Takeshi Kasai’s appointment had been “terminated” after an internal investigation revealed “evidence of inappropriate conduct “.
Tedros did not mention Kasai by name, only mentioning the title, Regional Director for the Western Pacific. This is the first time in history that the WHO has fired one of its regional directors.
“This has been an unprecedented and difficult journey for all of us,” Tedros wrote. He added that the selection process for the new director for the Western Pacific will begin next month. The Japanese government, which backed Kasai’s nomination, declined to comment. A summary of an internal WHO investigation presented at a meeting of the agency’s executive committee in Geneva this week found that Kasai regularly harassed employees in Asia, with “aggressive communications, public humiliation and racist remarks”. WHO directors told the organization’s top body that Kasai had created “a toxic environment”, that employees refrained from speaking out for fear of reprisals and that a “climate of mistrust “reigned at the WHO.
Officials also discovered that Kasai had falsified at least one appraisal of a subordinate, according to confidential documents obtained by the AP.
Kasai’s firing comes after an AP investigation in January 2022 found that more than 30 WHO employees had sent a written complaint against the director to heads of health agencies and members of his executive committee.
Documents and recordings show that Kasai made racist comments to staff and attributed the increase in COVID-19 cases in some Pacific countries to “a lack of capacity due to their culture, race and lower socio-economic status”.