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World Health Agency Like None Other

"The World Health Organization effectively co-ordinated so many different NGOs in a very complicated area."
"While, yes, it took a long time to get the outbreak [West Africa Ebola epidemic] under control, they were able to basically be the point people."
Dr.Srinivas Murthy, intensive-care specialist, University of British Columbia

"I have donated years of my time to organizations like and including the World Health Organization for absolutely no pay -- set up and worked in Ebola treatment and Central Africa with the WHO."
"Because no one else was there."
Dr.Rob Fowler, critical-care medicine specialist, Toronto

A health worker in Democratic Republic of Congo registers temperatures of people in July 2019, during an Ebola outbreak. The World Health Organization played an important role in handling the outbreak. Pamela Tulizo/AFP via Getty Images

According to Dr. Murthy, the disarray in the Democratic Republic of Congo in an effort to control the 2018-19 outbreak of Ebola would have had far worse outcomes even as health workers desperately attempted to save lives within an active and ongoing civil war theatre, had the World Health Organization not stepped in to marshal various medical aid groups while they were under violent attack.

When diphtheria swept through Rohingya refugee camps stationed in Bangladesh after the Muslim minority flooded out of Myanmar where they had been targeted by the military, the WHO played a similar role. Work of that kind on a global scale has convinced medical experts that the world health body will be in critical shape should American funding be withdrawn and the world, particularly the developing world, will be that much worse for its collapse.

The World Health Organization has come under fire repeatedly for the failings attributed to it in its leadership's decision-making most recently with the global pandemic, catering to China rather than objectively making its own informed decisions in alerting the world at large of the contagion of a new virus wreaking havoc wherever it inveigled its presence -- and that turned out to be everywhere, with disastrous consequences. Consequences that would have been less acute had Beijing been more forthcoming and the WHO more critical and assertive.

Much of the world body's work takes place in poorer countries of the world such as in aiding the fight against diseases like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, where countries lack their own public-health infrastructure. The World Health Organization is highly dependent on the willingness of wealthy countries of the world funding its activities, and the U.S. portion of that funding is considerable, corresponding to 15 percent of its total budget.

"The WHO really will be financially in big trouble", director of the Center for Global Health Studies, Yanzhong Huang at New Jersey's Seton Hall University stated, unless another country takes steps to fill the hole the withdrawal of U.S. funding will create. Beijing, in fact, a wealthy nation that has been sprinkling its wealth around the world in its famous 'belt and road' initiative, could fill that role. It is, after all, the Trump administration's feeling that the WHO is in China's hands in any event.

"In spite of the rhetoric, the biggest beneficiary of the president's move will almost surely be China", pointed out Dr.Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, an occasional critic of the World Health Organization. Funded by assessing what countries can afford, based on their GDP, accounts for about 20 percent of the WHO budget, over and above voluntary contributions many of which are from non-governmental organizations such as the Gates Foundation, the second largest overall contributor after the US., followed by Rotary International.

China, in point of fact, contributing $85 million to the WHO, was 46th in line as a contributor, lagging even Canada at 14th with contributions of $100 million, as opposed to the 2018-19 funding cycle where the U.S. assessment was $893 million. And then came news, after U.S.President Donald Trump expressed his displeasure with the WHO for aiding China in downplaying the COVID-19 outbreak that has devastated the U.S., that WHO officials themselves became frustrated behind the scenes with China.

Beijing's delays in releasing data on the new coronavirus didn't earn it any praise from WHO officials, beyond its leadership elite. In its eagerness to accept China's initial claim that COVID was not transmitted person to person, arguing against travel restrictions to slow the spread of the virus, WHO officials became increasingly frustrated. The WHO's handling of the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic was considered alarmist; conversely its reaction to the 2013-14 Ebola outbreak, ineffective.

Dr.Huang of the Center for Global Health Studies questions spending priorities at the WHO where Polio eradication absorbed 27 percent of the 2018-19 program budget; close to $1 billion, even as the number of cases narrowed to a few hundred. What redeems the WHO in the opinion of doctors, academics and global health experts is the work done in co-ordinating COVID vaccine development efforts and organizing clinical trials of potential treatments.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivering a speech via video link at the opening of the World Health Assembly virtual meeting from the WHO headquarters in Geneva, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. World Health Organization / AFP