Exciting progress has been achieved in the last decade to turn the World Health Organization (WHO) into a modern public health institution that is not just forward-looking but also up to the task at hand.
As a consequence of these transformations, WHO has been more effective and efficient while also becoming more transparent and accountable thanks to new leadership, management structures, and processes. Finally, these improvements are based on solid criteria for measuring success and are incorporated into the organization’s systems and procedures.
When member states initially embraced results-based management in the biennium 2000–2001 programme budget, which was built around around 30 areas of activity, they had long been concerned about the need to alter WHO.
Based on a six-year medium-term strategy plan and 13 strategic goals, a 10-year general programme of work for the period 2006–2015 was established in 2006, which included a redesigned planning framework. Some people thought WHO was pioneering the use of results-based management at the time, setting the bar high for other UN agencies to follow. More could and should be done, both inside WHO and among Member States, to highlight how all three levels of the Organization can help accomplish business goals.
Dr. Margaret Chan’s appointment as WHO’s director-general in 2006 was influenced by member states’ desire for reforms. Dr. Chan had acknowledged and made apparent her desire to take up the problems of modernising and streamlining the Organization throughout her campaign. After her nomination, she remarked, “I agree: WHO has to be smaller, more effective, more faster responsive to a changing world.” It was Dr Chan’s first presentation to the World Health Assembly, delivered in May 2007, that set the tone for the next several years by saying, “We confront the task of making WHO function more efficiently and effectively, getting all levels of WHO to work more cohesively, and encouraging employees. I think WHO is the UN’s leader in results-based management, but accountability and openness may yet be improved.” Drivers of transformation were identified as three key problems. First and foremost, WHO was overburdened and overcommitted.
Focused goals that best reflected the Organization’s competitive advantage in the evolving global health environment and laid a basis for WHO leadership in the future decades were required. Second, WHO’s position in global health governance and its relationships with other international health players needed to be clarified. It was also necessary for WHO to establish the ability and culture to adapt quickly and effectively to new problems in a fast changing environment.
Improved management and programming emphasis for the WHO will allow it to better fulfil its constitutional mission as “the direct and coordinate authority on international health activities” while also better serving its Member States in their efforts to improve their citizens’ wellbeing. The WHO’s governing bodies set forth three goals in order to make these improvements a reality:
- With the WHO satisfying expectations of its Member States and partners in tackling agreed global health objectives, focused on activities and areas where the Organization has a distinctive role or comparative advantage and funded in a manner that allows this focus.
- More cohesion in global health, with WHO leading the way in allowing the many diverse players to take an active and effective role in contributing to the health of all peoples.
- In pursuit of excellence, an organisation that is efficient, responsive and objectively transparent and responsible.
In the ten years after launching this ambitious plan, the Organization has profoundly changed while coping with some of the most serious health issues of our day, Whoever enters the doors of WHO today finds a reenergized organization that is ready to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, operating smoothly at all three levels of the organization – headquarters, regions, and countries – and actively engaged with partners and governments to address the health challenges of the twenty-first century. From 2007 until the present, this report chronicles such evolution.
- Exciting progress has been achieved in the last decade to turn the World Health Organization (WHO) into a modern public health institution that is not just forward-looking but also up to the task at hand. The improvements that WHO has experienced have resulted in enhanced effectiveness, efficiency, responsiveness, transparency, and accountability via new leadership, management structures, and systems. Reforms based on solid performance indicators have been implemented throughout the business, and they have been fully incorporated into existing systems and procedures.
- When member states initially embraced results-based management in the biennium 2000–2001 programme budget, which was built around around 30 areas of activity, they had long been concerned about the need to alter WHO.
- During the period of 2006–2015, a new framework for long-term strategic planning was implemented, based on a six-year medium-term strategy plan with 13 strategic goals. Some people thought WHO was pioneering the use of results-based management at the time, setting the standard for other UN agencies to follow.
- Members of WHO and a few of its Member States were of the opinion that the organization’s goals might be better served if the three levels of the organization worked together.
- It was partly due to the desire of Member States to strengthen WHO that Dr Margaret Chan was elected as Director-General in 2006. She had made it clear in her campaign that she was up for the task of modernizing and simplifying the Organization.
- “I agree: WHO has to be smaller, more effective, and faster responsive to a changing world,” she stated after her nomination. laying the groundwork for the next several years, in May 2007, Dr. Chan welcomed the chance to engage with WHO’s constituency, saying, “We confront the task of making WHO run more efficiently and effectively, getting all levels of WHO to work more cohesively, and encouraging personnel.
- With regard to results-based management, I think WHO is the most effective, but there is still room for improvement in accountability and openness.”
- The three most pressing issues were identified as the driving forces of change. First and foremost, WHO was overburdened and understaffed. WHO’s comparative advantage in the rapidly changing global health environment needs to be better reflected in its priorities, which would then serve as a solid basis for its future global leadership. There was also a need for clarification on who’s role in global health governance and how it relates to other players in the field.
- It was also necessary for WHO to establish the ability and culture to adapt quickly and effectively to new problems in a fast-changing environment.
In the last 12 months, there have been a number of major global health projects. More individuals were murdered by COVID-19 in 2021 than they were in 2020, and governments were struggling to maintain other health systems working. There has been little recognition or compensation for these efforts, which have been borne mostly by health and care workers. When COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments were only available in the richest countries, many individuals, especially those in low-income countries, were left exposed to the illness. As with diabetes and dementia, there have been both successes and setbacks in other areas of health care. Ten global trends to watch out for in 2021, as well as a couple that you may have missed, are listed below.
Innovation and inequities in the COVID-19 response
- Even more attention was paid to the disparities in the availability of health care tools in 2013.
- Only one in four African health professionals had received the COVID-19 vaccination by the end of November, despite the fact that 8 billion doses had been given globally. Low-income nations have been the site of only 0.4% of all tests.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) has spearheaded the campaign to eliminate the COVID-19 epidemic. We have established worldwide vaccination objectives and highlighted that the most vulnerable populations, like as health professionals and the elderly, should be protected first. In December 2021, we have confirmed the safety, efficacy, and quality of 10 COVID-19 vaccines, and we are constantly updating our therapeutic recommendations to include the most recent clinical findings.
- The WHO’s COVID-19 reaction relies heavily on cooperation. The WHO’s Research and Development Blueprint brought together the world’s greatest scientists to ask and answer the important research questions required to address COVID-19. For poor and middle-income nations, the ACT-Accelerator reduced the cost of COVID-19 fast testing by half and bought more than 148 million tests. Covax provided more than 75% of the world’s vaccinations, despite significant hurdles, such as vaccine stockpiling and lack of openness from producers.. We worked together with governments throughout the world this year to ensure that rollouts went smoothly.
- As part of the WHO’s efforts, a South African company will bring together the know-how, data, and technology needed to produce mRNA products for the area.
- The COVID-19 Technology Access Pool announced its first licence, allowing all nations to produce a serological test created by the Spanish National Research Council, as an excellent example of a transparent, worldwide, non-exclusive arrangement.
- Efforts to prevent future outbreaks of COVID-19 are increasing as our reaction continues. In Berlin, we established a Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence Hub in partnership with Germany’s Ministry of Health. The first facility in our worldwide BioHub system for exchanging pathogens, which will assist evaluate threats and improve global preparation, has been established in Switzerland.
- Over 100 nations have utilised this technology to review and improve their COVID-19 responses in real time via Intra-Action Reviews. As a result, nations have been able to learn from one other in evaluating their preparation for the next pandemic, while also ensuring that their people’ health is maintained and improved.
Emergencies emerge and persist
- Despite the ongoing epidemic, WHO and its partners continued to assist populations affected by long-term humanitarian crises, such as Yemen and Syria, while reacting to new ones in Afghanistan and Northern Ethiopia.
- Conflict and other disease outbreaks have already taken a heavy toll on Yemen’s healthcare system, with barely half of its institutions operational. Many people have been assisted by the World Health Organization’s funding of critical health services and therapeutic feeding centres for children with acute malnutrition. The World Health Organization (WHO) responded to the epidemic by constructing oxygen production stations, training health care personnel, providing medical and protective equipment, and increasing laboratory and testing capacity.
- More than a decade of conflict has put a strain on resources in Syria. The World Health Organization (WHO) stepped in to give medical supplies and mental health assistance by collaborating with partners.
- Afghanistan, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, is now dealing with acute watery diarrhoea, dengue, measles, polio, and malaria in addition to COVID-19. To far, over 414 metric tonnes of life-saving medical supplies have been supplied by WHO and its partners since August 15, 2021, and an October campaign resulted in the immunisation of over 8.5 million children against polio.
- People in Northern Ethiopia were also suffering from severe problems, including a shortage of gasoline, food, and medication. To far, the WHO has sent more than 367 metric tonnes of humanitarian aid to Ethiopia, benefiting hundreds of thousands of individuals and families. We have started a programme to vaccinate 2 million people in the Tigray area against cholera alongside partners. As part of our efforts, we also sponsored mobile health and nutrition teams in conflict-affected districts of Afar, Amhara, and Tigray.
Tackling health service challenges
- The ripple effects of once-in-a-generation catastrophes are enormous. The epidemic, which has sparked the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s and severely interrupted health systems, is likely to put an end to two decades of worldwide progress toward universal health coverage (UHC).
- In 2020, 23 million children will be missing out on regular immunizations, the biggest number for more than a decade, raising the risk of illnesses like measles and polio, according to new statistics released this year. Diabetes, cancer screening and treatment, and hypertension management services were disrupted in more than half of the countries WHO examined between June and October 2021.
- UHC remains WHO’s compass in the face of these difficulties. Although the globe was already falling short of our goal of seeing 1 billion more people benefit from UHC, half a billion people were forced into severe poverty due to the fees they had to make for health care, even before COVID-19. Since the epidemic is just going to exacerbate the situation, we need to step up our efforts and make ‘Health For All’ our rallying cry in the recovery effort.
- Building up health systems is essential to ensuring universal healthcare coverage and health security, as shown by COVID-19. Investing in basic health care, the health and care personnel, health infrastructure, medications and other health goods, and improving social protection measures is essential for any country.
WHO, on the other hand, is helping to strengthen health services at this critical juncture by working with partners to achieve the Immunization Agenda 2030 goal. By bringing together professionals to discuss how to support health for everyone and guarantee that medical innovations serve the general good, we are also promoting big picture thinking. Geneva’s Charter for Well-Being was signed shortly after UHC Day, which signifies the need to change our focus from treatment to prevention and empower individuals to take charge of their own health
