Global Health Watch 1 in one file

Holding to account | E1
20 Health ministers gather at the World Health Assembly.
than befriend. Besuited bureaucrats and smart secretaries rub shoulders with
visitors from every corner of the globe, and the enormous restaurant offers an
exotic menu to match. Upstairs, rather less smart corridors of small cubicles
house hundreds of health professionals from all over the world.
The calm, hushed atmosphere is a far cry from the simple bush hut where
WHO consultants are encouraging midwives to help new mothers feed their
babies from the breast rather than a bottle. It is a long way from the WHO
office in a country in conflict where staff operate under conditions of physical
danger. Yet all these settings are part of the same organization, the UN’s
specialized agency for health and the world’s leading health body. The immense
range of what WHO does and where it does it, the complexity and regional
differences in its structures, and the infinite variety of people who work
for it and with it, make generalizations about it both difficult and dangerous.
Inevitably, too, such a large and diffuse organization provokes strong feelings,
from optimism and inspiration to frustration, anger and despair.
This chapter cannot do justice to the full range of WHO activity and the
many criticisms and reform proposals. Issues of global health policy are discussed
elsewhere in this report. Rather, it will present a brief report card on
WHO as an institution. In reviewing recent major criticisms and reforms, it
is noted that the critics are long on description but short on solutions. The
final part of the chapter therefore focuses on three major drivers of WHO performance
– resources, the internal environment of WHO, and the attitudes of
member states – and how they need to change.
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