Yes, "Why not fund WHO instead?": Only 13% of the WHO budget is core budget. In the early years of WHO, the reason why the idea of Health for all could be adopted was because the funding was for the technical agency as a whole. Today, instead, some governments own and fund their own program, the private sector gets involved in public-private partnership. The outcome is that decisions made in the World Health Assembly may or may not be reflected in the WHO work, budget and action.
For example, governments voted a major resolution on Rational drug use. But was there a staff, was there resources, allocated to implementing that decision? There is a staff of ONE, one sole person, working on injection safety, even though it is estimated that there are 8 billion 'dirty' injections putting people at risk in health care. This creates an enormous problem for world health.
Funding WHO as a technical body is urgent, and if it were funded, a lot of the problem of 'influence' would diminish and choices and priorities would be more rational and more reflective of what governments decide.
I fully agree and concur with Alison Katz's remarks also. The Global Fund while essential for HIV treatment, damaged by its very working, health systems in all countries. Everyone knows that. And, may we ask, how come, when you read the 2006-2015 plan of STOPTB, you read that wages of public sector employees should be increased and that employment should be increased in the public sector, while the World Bank brief, used for the recent G20, writes explicitly that public health freeze in hiring and wage level is necessary?
As for the MDGs, the major issue is that to 'fulfill' the conditions for getting help to fulfill the MDG, governments have to agree to IMF conditions of restricting credit and public services, and therefore it's like forcing someone to give up a job to go get help on welfare. Fundamentally absurd.
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Garance Upham
mailto:g_upham@club-internet.fr