It is a discreet sign, on the heights of Geneva. Signed “OMS”, it points to a path lined with rubble. At the end, the flagship of the World Health Organization, a large rectangle of concrete, glass and aluminum, emblematic of the modernist architecture of the 1960s, was emptied while it was being removed from the asbestos and the few 2,500 employees from the Geneva headquarters have moved into an adjoining extension. A project that illustrates the renovation launched by the institution.
Several reforms must indeed be addressed during the 75and World Health Assembly, which began on Sunday May 22. It is during this annual high mass that the 194 Member States decide on WHO policy.
This year’s edition is particularly dense, with 173 topics on the agenda for the week. In addition to strengthening preparedness and response to health emergencies, WHO must establish strategies on food security, oral health, tuberculosis, but also agree on agendas to fight against non-communicable diseases , neurological disorders or even poliomyelitis.
Among the highlights of the week is the election of the director general on Tuesday, during which doctor Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will unsurprisingly be dubbed for a new five-year term. The only candidate for re-election, the one nicknamed “Dr Tedros” will have to carry out various major reforms, in particular on the financing and governance of an institution under fire from critics, but which appears to all to be essential.
“WHO is a magnificent agency, badly needed in the field of global health,” testifies Michel Kazatchkine, medical immunologist, member of the Independent Group on Pandemic Preparedness and Response (GIPR), mandated by the WHO in 2020. Founded on April 7, 1948, the WHO has set itself the task of leading all the peoples of the world to the highest possible level of health. This, under the “human right to health”, enshrined in its Constitution. High and commendable ambition.
A look back at the two and a half years of an unprecedented pandemic which will have placed the institution under pressure, and made its reforms all the more urgent.
Ignition delays at the start of the pandemic
When an outbreak of atypical pneumonia erupted in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, it challenged a severely weakened WHO leadership, for at least two reasons.
The first results from the failing responses of the WHO during two previous health crises. “During the 2009-2010 flu pandemic, the WHO was accused of overreacting, of being in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry, says Marie-Paule Kieny, virologist and vaccinologist. As a result, this organization saw its funding devoted to the management of health crises melt away”, adds this expert, who, between 2010 and 2017, was WHO’s Deputy Director General for Health Systems and Innovation.
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