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Tuesday, March 19th, 2019

The planet’s premier health agency has announced drastic reforms. Critics say they aren’t drastic enough

Author:     Kai Kupferschmidt
Source:     Science
Publication Date:     Mar. 12, 2019 , 3:25 PM
 Link: The planet’s premier health agency has announced drastic reforms. Critics say they aren’t drastic enough
Stephan:   Few Americans pay much attention to the World Health Organization (WHO), perhaps because the organization doesn't do much in the United States. But in the developing world WHO's involvement may mean the difference in whether your mother dies in childbirth or your sister dies of some infectious disease. Here is some good news about this vitally important part of the world health picture.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus visited an Ebola treatment center in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 9 March.
Credit: L. Mackenzie/WHO

In a speech last week, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recalled the posters about smallpox that he saw as a child in his hometown Asmara, in what is now Eritrea. “I remember hearing about an organization called the World Health Organization [WHO] that was ridding the world of this terrifying disease, one vaccination at a time,” he said. Much has changed since then. Smallpox was vanquished; Tedros, who’s Ethiopian, is the first African head of WHO; and in a series of reforms laid out in the same speech, he is trying to restore the storied organization to health.

The changes aim to bring more talent to WHO and improve coordination between its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and six regional offices. But some observers say Tedros’s agenda doesn’t address long-standing problems, including a chronic shortage of money, little power over how to spend it, and the regional offices’ prickly independence. “The main problems of WHO are unsolved by […]

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