WHO funding model ‘left world ill-prepared’ for COVID

ABSTRACT

Speed read Global health leaders, non-profits call on WHO leadership to review funding Member States urged to pay higher contributions to safeguard global health Consensus must be reached before World Health Assembly in May - UN health strategist A key meeting of the WHO’s executive board has spawned an upswell of calls to overhaul the UN agency’s funding, with leaders saying failure to invest in global health left the world ill-prepared for the COVID-19 “tsunami of suffering”. A letter signed by a host of leaders including Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, co-chairs of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, and Gordon Brown, WHO Ambassador for Global Health Financing, decried the world’s “ailing approach to investing in global public health, and universal health coverage”, laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic. Congratulations @DrTedros nominated for a second term as DG. @WHO is the only global normative & technical health agency and it needs sustainable financing to deliver on its huge mandate. https//t.co/IbTBE8gyOG — Soumya Swaminathan (@doctorsoumya) January 25, 2022 Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, in the US, told SciDev.Net that the WHO’s budget was “wholly incommensurate with its global responsibilities”.