Saima Wazed resigns as WHO South-East Asia director after a year on unpaid leave

Saima Wazed resigned on Wednesday as World Health Organization Regional Director for South-East Asia. Reuters published the resignation letter she sent to Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Wazed, 53, is the daughter of Sheikh Hasina, who was removed from office as Bangladesh's prime minister in 2024. She took the WHO post in January 2024 for a five-year term.

The letter is angry and specific. "I was elected to the position of Regional Director in order to serve the countries in my region, which I had sincerely done," she wrote. "Since you continue to prevent me from effectively carrying out my duties, I have lost all trust and confidence in your leadership of WHO." She told The Indian Express the next morning that she had quit because of harassment and intimidation by Tedros and because he had blocked her request for an inquiry into his own conduct.

The agency had put her on unpaid administrative leave in July 2025. That status lasted until she resigned. An internal email from the Director-General's office, described in Indian coverage, listed objections from the Bangladesh government, questions about the legitimacy of her election, and cases filed by Bangladesh's Anti-Corruption Commission as factors in the leave decision.

The ACC cases, filed in March 2025, alleged fraud, forgery and misuse of power. A lawyers' letter dated 3 July 2026, seen by Reuters, said WHO accused Wazed of financial fraud tied to travel to China and of misrepresenting her academic credentials during the campaign for the job. The same correspondence said the agency alleged she had acquired a plot of land in Bangladesh unlawfully. Wazed has denied the charges. In the resignation letter she said she obtained the land before joining WHO and was entitled to it under a Bangladeshi statute covering families of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina's father.

Her public line after the resignation is that the WHO investigation cleared her of financial fraud. She told OCCRP she had been cleared of any financial fraud charges and had evidence. "Now that the investigation has been completed, I have decided to resign and move on. I need to work and return to giving my services to the world." Health Policy Watch, cited by OCCRP, reported that the WHO probe found the ACC allegations unsubstantiated. Those two statements sit beside the agency's earlier accusations in the lawyers' file. The public record does not yet include the full investigation report.

Wazed spent more than a year unpaid. OCCRP described her as financially drained and mentally exhausted by the leave. That is the practical pressure under which the letter was written. A regional director who cannot enter the office and cannot draw a salary is already out of the job in all but title. The resignation makes the fact formal.

The South-East Asia region covers a large share of the world's population and, this month, a measles outbreak in Bangladesh that has passed 1,000 deaths. The regional office is based in New Delhi. Member states will have to choose an interim arrangement and then a successor. The election that put Wazed in the chair in 2024 was already contested in Dhaka after Hasina fell. The next election will be watched for the same reason.

Tedros has not issued a detailed public reply to the letter's accusations against him. WHO's interest is a clean handover and as little further litigation as possible. Wazed's interest is a record that says she was cleared and that she left because of the Director-General, not because of the ACC. Bangladesh's interest is the domestic cases, which do not disappear when a Geneva title is laid down.

The next documents that matter are the WHO investigation report, if it is released, and any ACC court date in Dhaka. Until those appear, the story is a resignation letter, a year of unpaid leave, and two institutions that no longer accept each other's account of the same woman.