Saima Wazed resigns as WHO South-East Asia chief a day after states sought her removal

Saima Wazed resigned as World Health Organization Regional Director for South-East Asia on 9 September, one day after member states on the regional committee recommended that her appointment be ended. She sent the letter to Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Dr Nilesh Buddha remains officer-in-charge until a successor is chosen.

Wazed, 53, is the daughter of Sheikh Hasina, the former Bangladesh prime minister who fled the country in August 2024. She was elected in 2023 and took the New Delhi-based post on 1 February 2024 for a five-year term. Six months later her mother's government fell. Bangladesh's Anti-Corruption Commission later filed cases alleging fraud, forgery and misuse of power. WHO first placed her on leave in July 2025 and later on unpaid administrative leave.

A WHO spokesman told Health Policy Watch that the Regional Committee made the termination recommendation behind closed doors on 8 September at its 79th meeting. That recommendation was due to go to the Executive Board. Wazed resigned first. WHO said a committee had also recommended dismissal the day before she quit.

In the letter seen by Reuters, Wazed wrote that she had lost trust in Tedros's leadership and that nearly a year without pay had made her finances untenable. She told The Indian Express she quit because of harassment and intimidation by the director-general and because he had blocked her request for an investigation into his own conduct. She said she had been cleared of financial fraud and had evidence to prove it.

Lawyers for Wazed wrote to WHO on 3 July 2026 describing the agency's accusations: financial fraud tied to travel to China, misrepresentation of academic credentials, and the alleged illegal acquisition of a plot of land in Bangladesh. She has denied all three. On the land, she said she obtained it before joining WHO under a Bangladeshi statute covering families of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina's father.

Health Policy Watch, which first reported parts of the internal process, said people familiar with the file described months of pressure from Dhaka on Tedros to remove a regional director the interim Bangladeshi government is prosecuting. An OCCRP account published on 10 September said an internal WHO review found the original financial-fraud allegations unsubstantiated, even as the governance track toward termination continued.

The South-East Asia region covers 11 countries, including India, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh and Nepal. The regional director is elected by those states, not appointed by Geneva alone. That is why the committee vote on 8 September mattered. Once the states asked for termination, remaining in post would have required Tedros and the Executive Board to overrule the region that elected her.

WHO now has to run a new election against a political backdrop that did not exist in 2023. Bangladesh will arrive as a complainant state, not as the home government of the incumbent. India hosts the office and will have a practical interest in a director who can work with Delhi. The rest of the region will have to decide whether it wants a health technician or another political figure.

Wazed's exit does not settle the Bangladeshi cases. Those remain with the Anti-Corruption Commission and the courts in Dhaka. It does close the Geneva chapter. A UN specialised agency has shown that an elected regional head can be parked on unpaid leave for a year and then pushed out after a closed regional vote, while the person involved calls the process a witch hunt. That record will sit on the next candidate's desk.