World Health Body Restructures, Cuts Budget After US Withdrawal
The World Health Organization tried to stabilise its finances at its annual assembly which ended on Tuesday, but still remains well short of reaching its already reduced target.
Hit by the withdrawal of its biggest donor, the United States, the WHO trimmed its already smaller 2026-2027 budget from $5.3 billion to $4.2 billion.
The UN health agency's programme budget for 2024-2025 was $6.8 billion.
The slimmer budget plan was approved during the World Health Assembly, which serves as the WHO's decision-making body.
But a funding gap of some $1.7 billion remains.
How WHO Funding Works
WHO budgets run in two-year cycles.
Founded in 1948, the agency initially received all its funding through "assessed contributions": nations' membership fees calculated according to wealth and population.
However, the WHO became increasingly reliant on "voluntary contributions", which only go towards outcomes specified by the donor.
By the 2020-2021 cycle, assessed contributions represented only 16 percent of the approved programme budget.
And the organisation had long been over-reliant on voluntary funding from a few major donors.
2026-2027 Budget
In 2022, member states agreed to increase their assessed contributions to represent 50 percent of the WHO's core budget by the 2030-2031 cycle at the latest -- giving the WHO more stable, flexible and predictable income streams.
They upped membership fees by 20 percent as part of the 2024-2025 budget.
At this year's assembly, countries approved another 20 percent increase in membership fees, which should represent an additional $90 million in revenue per year.
They also endorsed the WHO's 2026-2027 budget of $4.2 billion.
"Your approval of the next increase in assessed contributions was a strong vote of confidence in your WHO at this critical time," the organisation's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday in closing the assembly.
Most of that money is already assured.
"We have now secured 60 percent of our base budget for 2026-2027; a remarkable result in today's financial climate," said Hanan Balkhy, the WHO's Eastern Mediterranean regional director.
But that means the agency is still $1.7 billion short, despite the reduced budget.
Pledges
At a pledging event last week, donors put in an additional $210 million for the 2025-2028 investment round, supporting the WHO's base budget.
That included $80 million from Switzerland, $57 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, $13.5 million from Sweden and $6 million from Qatar.
"In a challenging climate for global health, these funds will help us to preserve and extend our life-saving work," said Tedros.
United States
Upon returning to office in January, US President Donald Trump started the one-year process for leaving the WHO, and had frozen virtually all US foreign aid.
The United States was traditionally the WHO's largest donor. Washington's departure, and its refusal to pay its membership fees for 2024 and 2025, has left the WHO reeling financially.
Washington did not attend the World Health Assembly.
However, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent a video message in which he branded the organization as bloated and moribund, and urged other countries to "consider joining us" in creating new institutions instead.
Kennedy said the UN agency was under undue influence from China, gender ideology and the pharmaceutical industry.
Reorganisation
The budget cuts have forced the WHO to reorganise.
It is reducing its executive management team from 14 to seven due to the dramatic US funding cuts.
The number of departments is being reduced from 76 to 34.
The WHO has not yet announced any large-scale layoffs, unlike other UN agencies.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NDTV
4 hours ago
- NDTV
WHO Is Finalising A New Treaty To Prep For The Next Pandemic, But US Isn't Signing
On March 20, 2025, members of the World Health Organization adopted the world's first pandemic agreement, following three years of 'intensive negotiations launched by governments in response to the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.' The U.S., however, did not participate, in part because of its intention to withdraw from the WHO. Global health experts are hailing the agreement as a historic moment. What does the agreement mean for the world, and how can it make everyone safer and more prepared for the next pandemic? The Conversation asked Nicole Hassoun, a professor at Binghamton University and executive director of Global Health Impact, to explain the pandemic accord, its prospects for advancing global health, and the significance of the U.S.'s absence from it. What will the pandemic agreement do? The accord will bolster pandemic preparation within individual countries and around the world. Countries signing onto the agreement are committing to improve their disease surveillance and grow their heath care workforces, strengthen their regulatory systems and invest in research and development. It encourages countries to strengthen their health regulations and infrastructure, improve communication with the public about pandemics and increase funding for preparation and response efforts. It also includes new mechanisms for producing and distributing vaccines and other essential countermeasures. Finally, it encourages countries to coordinate their responses and share information about infectious diseases and intellectual property so that vaccines and other essential countermeasures can be made available more quickly. The agreement will take effect once enough countries ratify it, which may take several years. Why isn't the US involved? The Biden administration was broadly supportive of a pandemic agreement and was an active participant in negotiations. Prior to Donald Trump's reelection, however, Republican governors had signed a letter opposing the treaty, echoing a conservative think tank's concerns about U.S. sovereignty. The U.S. withdrew from negotiations when President Trump signed an executive order to withdraw from the WHO on the day he was inaugurated for his second term. Why could the lack of US involvement be beneficial for the world? The lack of U.S. involvement likely resulted in a much more equitable treaty, and it is not clear that countries could have reached an agreement had the U.S. continued to object to key provisions. It was only once the U.S. withdrew from the negotiations that an agreement was reached. The U.S. and several other wealthy countries were concerned with protecting their pharmaceutical industry's profits and resisted efforts aimed at convincing pharmaceutical companies to share the knowledge, data and intellectual property needed for producing new vaccines and other essential countermeasures. Other negotiators sought greater access to vaccines and other treatments during a pandemic for poorer countries, which often rely on patented technologies from global pharmaceutical companies. While most people in wealthy countries had access to COVID-19 vaccines as early as 2021, many people in developing countries had to wait years for vaccines. How could the agreement broaden access for treatments? One of the contentious issues in the pandemic agreement has to do with how many vaccines manufacturers in each country must share in exchange for access to genetic sequences to emerging infectious diseases. Countries are still negotiating a system for sharing the genetic information on pathogens in return for access to vaccines themselves. It is important that researchers can get these sequences to make vaccines. And, of course, people need access to the vaccines once they are developed. Still, there are many more promising aspects of the agreement for which no further negotiations are necessary. For instance, the agreement will increase global vaccine supply by increasing manufacturing around the world. The agreement also specifies that countries and the WHO should work together to create a mechanism for fairly sharing the intellectual property, data and knowledge needed to produce vaccines and other essential health products. If financing for new innovation requires equitable access to the new technologies that are developed, many people in poor countries may get access to vaccines much more quickly in the next pandemic. The agreement also encourages individual countries to offer sufficient incentives for pharmaceutical companies to extend access to developing countries. If countries implement these changes, that will benefit people in rich countries as well as poor ones. A more equitable distribution of vaccines can contain the spread of disease, saving millions of lives. What more should be done, and does the US have a role to play? In my view, the best way to protect public health moving forward is for countries to sign on to the agreement and devote more resources to global health initiatives. This is particularly important given declining investment and participation in the WHO and the contraction of other international health initiatives, such as USAID. Without international coordination, it will become harder to catch and address problems early enough to prevent epidemics from becoming pandemics. It will also be imperative for member countries to provide funding to support the agreement's goals and secure the innovation and access to new technologies. This requires building the basic health infrastructure to ensure shots can get into people's arms.
The Hindu
6 hours ago
- The Hindu
Europe suffers its largest diphtheria outbreak in 70 years
The largest diphtheria outbreak to strike Western Europe in 70 years has been affecting vulnerable people such as migrants and the homeless since 2022, new research said Wednesday. Diphtheria is a highly contagious bacterial infection that can attack the respiratory tract and spread throughout the body, causing a sore throat, fever and other symptoms. For unvaccinated people, it can be fatal in around 30 percent of cases, and is deadlier for children, according to the World Health Organization. In 2022, there was an unusual surge in the bacteria that causes diphtheria -- Corynebacterium diphtheriae -- in several European countries, particularly among recently arrived migrants, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. That year 362 cases were recorded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Contact tracing and screening helped tamp down the outbreak, but rare infections have continued to be recorded, the researchers said. A total of 536 cases, including three deaths, have been recorded across Europe since the start of 2022. Patient samples from 10 countries showed that 98 percent of the cases were in males with an average age of 18. Almost all had recently migrated. "The outbreak, which mainly affected migrants from Afghanistan and Syria, was not the result of people being infected in their countries of origin, but during their migration journeys or in their places of accommodation in European countries," said a joint statement from France's public health agency and the Pasteur Institute. The genetic similarities between the strains seen in people from different countries suggests that there was a "recent point of contact, outside the country of origin" at the source of the outbreak, the statement added. The exact areas affected by the outbreak remains unclear. But a genetic link between the 2022 strain and the one detected in Germany this year indicates that "the bacteria continues to circulate quietly in Western Europe," the statement said. Vaccination is very effective at fending off diphtheria, and the researchers emphasised the importance of immunisation programmes for the general public. They also called for European nations to do more to ensure their most vulnerable people avoid contracting the disease. That included raising awareness of the symptoms among doctors and those in contact with migrants and the homeless, as well as increasing access to vaccines and antibiotic drugs.
Mint
6 hours ago
- Mint
Israel-Backed Gaza Aid Group Suspends Operations for Second Day
An Israel- and US-backed mechanism to distribute food in Gaza suspended operations for a second day following a series of deadly incidents near its sites that drew international criticism. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a Swiss-based nonprofit, launched in Gaza last week following a months-long Israeli blockade of the territory, and says it has handed out enough food staples for millions of meals. But the roll-out has been dogged by overcrowding and at least one incident in which Israeli forces, citing a security threat, fired toward Palestinians headed to a GHF aid center. 'The world is watching, day after day, horrifying scenes of Palestinians being shot, wounded or killed in Gaza while simply trying to eat,' Tom Fletcher, the UN humanitarian affairs chief, said in a statement urging Israel to allow his organization's aid network back into the territory. 'We must be allowed to do our jobs: We have the teams, the plan, the supplies and the experience.' UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday called for an independent investigation into reports that Israeli forces had killed dozens near the aid stations in Rafah. The Israeli army denied that its soldiers had shot anyone seeking aid and the GHF called the reports 'outright fabrications.' In a statement on June 2, the International Committee of the Red Cross said its hospital had received 21 dead among 179 casualties. The stations were shuttered on Wednesday and on Thursday morning 'due to ongoing maintenance and repair work,' the GHF said in a statement. It was not immediately clear when operations might resume. Gaza's 2 million Palestinians had long depended on UN relief before the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people. During the almost 20-month-old war — in which more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry — UN agencies have been sidelined by Israel, which accuses them of being too close to the US-designated terrorist group. Some of Israel's closest European allies, including Germany, the UK and France, have are increasingly critical of Israel's prosecution of the war, which has destroyed much of the coastal strip and sparked what international aid agencies say is a hunger crisis. They're considering trade sanctions and curbs on arms sales to push Israel to end the war. The UN has criticized the GHF for not being able to provide anywhere near enough food and medicine for Gaza's population and for politicizing humanitarian work. Israel, which controls Gaza's borders, argues that Hamas benefits from siphoning off UN aid. 'There is a joint effort here, both by Hamas and by the UN, which want to see the failure of these distribution centers,' Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the UN, said in an Army Radio interview on Thursday. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
