A Race To Restore Confidence In The World Health Organization

Editor’s Note: This post reflects on a panel that Dr. Jha moderated this January in Washington, DC hosted by The Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center, the Harvard Global Health Institute, and Health Affairs. The election for the next Director General (DG) of the World Health Organization (WHO) has stirred a quiet but important conversation about the agency’s future role. Yet the two major questions driving this uncertainty—do we really need a WHO and, if yes, what do we need the WHO to do—are often avoided in polite company. The next DG needs to answer both of those questions. The world has changed since the WHO was founded nearly 70 years ago. The number of organizations engaged in global health was small and the WHO played the central role in cross-national health issues because there were no other obvious entities to do so. Today, the world has become deeply interconnected and interdependent, and the number of organizations engaged in global health has exploded. As Julio Frenk recently noted, 175 new entities, from funders to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), many with a strong focus on global health, have come into existence in just the past decade. In this now crowded stage, critics (from member states to prominent thought leaders) are asking, does the WHO still have a role? Learning From The Aftermath Of Ebola In addition to a more developed global health landscape, skeptics are concerned that the...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured Global Health Policy Ebola infectious disease World Health Organization Zika Source Type: blogs