The whole World in his hands.

Responsible for leading a mass vaccination campaign during the '70s that managed to completely eradicate Smallpox in 1979 and for launching a TB control strategy in 1995 that managed to save more than 35 million lives, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has done much in the past to aid and protect the people of this world. However, in 2013 the WHO was criticised for responding slowly to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa which subsequently led to the dire situation which we saw unfold there. Between 1979, 1995 and 2013, the fundamental reason as to why there was a difference in the way the WHO operated was the leadership. The Director General. I am writing this article today because on Tuesday 23rd May 2017, a new Director General was voted in and today we are going to discuss what this means for the World Health Organisation.

First of all, let's talk about what the WHO is, and what they aim to achieve. First and foremost, the WHO is a UN agency whose goal is to "build a better, healthier future for people all over the world". What this means is that they strive to achieve universal health access for all the peoples of this world and so that there is no disparity or severe dichotomy between a poor and rich nations in terms of the health care their citizens have access to. They do this by working with nations and helping set up agendas and schemes in order to set up facilities and areas where people can access health/medical services. Its funding comes from voluntary and mandatory contributions, mandatory contributions from the member states of the UN and then any additional contributions from either member states or the philanthropy of people. That last point raises a particular issue which we will discuss later.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the Director-General-elect of the WHO. Dr Ghebreyesus is from Ethiopia and has an impressive track record of being the Ethiopian Health Minister, Chairman of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria and he also has a PhD in Community Health. His top five priorities of being the new leader are:
  • Advancing universal health coverage
  • Ensuring WHO responds rapidly and effectively to disease outbreaks and emergencies
  • Putting the wellbeing of women, children and adolescents at the centre of global h ealth and development
  • Helping nations address the effects of climate change on health
  • Making the agency transparent and accountable


    • In spite of his determination and well meaning nature, I think there is an issue that will hinder his, and the WHO's progress in the longrun. As I mentioned before, its funding comes from the contributions of various states around the world. Its total budget is around $2 billion which sounds like a large amount, until you realise this is the sum for all 7.3 billion people on this planet and the CDC in the USA has a budget of $7,013,846,000, strictly for the peoples of that country. My point is that $2 billion is minute in the grand scheme of things and holds the organisation back. They find that they want to build all these facilities and medical centres for third-world countries so people can have quick and easy access to health care, but they run into the problem that because of their lack of funds, they can either do a little bit everywhere (which doesn't help any very much in the long-term) or a lot of things in one place. The latter of course meaning that another region gets put on hold because they haven't got the money to do the same for them. This way of operating will never create anything sustainable or long-term because there will always be operations shutting down. Therefore, different organisations of the UN need to co-operate in order to achieve their shared goals.

    There are organisations focused on building sustainable infrastructure in third world countries. If they and the WHO worked together then one group would focus on the infrastructure and building roads and the other could focus on staffing the facilities. This way there would be a larger budget and with two (or more) organsiations working at once, they could achieve more and achieve it faster. The problem right now, is there is little communication between the various organisations of the UN and they're all pedalling really hard in their own little sectors, but the problem is, they're all pedalling in different directions. It's time to co-operate, because as we've seen time and time again, co-operation works where working on your lonesome fails.

    Thank you for reading, this has been Timothy K. Bosse and I hope you take something away from this today.

    Citations:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39973940
    https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2017/fy-2017-cdc-budget-overview.pdf
    http://www.who.int/about/en/
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40010522


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