PHM-Exch> PHM: WHO Exec Bd 130 Report Day 3

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Alice Fabbri <alealifab at gmail.com>


Report the WHO watchers prepared on the third day of the 130th Executive
Board just uploaded.
The report is available at:http://www.ghwatch.org/node/448



Highlights from the third day of the 130th Executive Board

Geneva, 18.01.12

Nomination of the Director-General
**

Dr Margaret Chan was nominated by the Executive Board for a second term as
Director-General of the Organisation. This nomination will be submitted for
approval to the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly in May 2012.

The first part of this session was not open to NGOs. When the session was
opened again, Dr Chan took the floor thanking the Board for their
confidence and support.

She stated that the work in public health is never done, with the exception
of disease eradication, and reaffirmed her commitment by saying: “First
time I promised to work tirelessly. I have done so.[...] I will work even
harder to ensure everyone reaches the highest attainable status of health”.

All Member States expressed their appreciation and congratulated Dr Chan
for the nomination.

However, it has to be mentioned that no other candidates were proposed for
the DG position and this situation leaves room for some considerations
about the impact of geopolitics on the Organisation management.


*WHO Reform*
*
Programmes and priority setting *

The discussion about the WHO reform began with comments on document EB
130/5 Add.1 “Programmes and Priority Setting”. Commenting on the 7 proposed
categories for the next general programme of work, some Latin American
countries asked how these categories came to be suggested. Following this
observation, Norway and Switzerland, explicitly suggested, at this point in
time, to focus on the process and criteria for priority setting rather than
on the priorities themselves. On the same issue, Estonia, talking on behalf
of EU, directly asked the Secretariat to set up a drafting group that
should work separately during the EB, to define the Terms of Reference for
priority setting through a Member States-driven process.

Beyond technical arrangements, Estonia as well as Japan and Germany pointed
out that priority setting should be linked with the financial reform and
that resource mobilization and allocation should necessarily be
subordinated to the identified areas of work.

According to Member States suggestions, priority definition should be based
on a bottom-up approach taking individual country needs as a starting
point. Striking a discordant note, US suggested that global objectives
should guide regional and local ones and eventually go back to the centre.
The discussion on country needs led to question the resource allocation
among the three level of the Organisation and the concept of country
grouping proposed in the document (Par. 12). India and China highlighted
how the 5 categories proposed are almost entirely based on level of
development rather than on the burden of diseases and how countries in the
same group can have different health needs.

Last but not least, Ecuador and France complained about the late release of
the document EB130/5 Add. 1 and Add.2, which prevented Member States to
adequately analyze and react on them.

Afterwards, three NGOs took the floor: Medicines Sans Frontiere, Medicus
Mundi International and the People’s Health Movement, and Democratizing
Global Health Coalition (a group of public interest organizations that have
come together to focus on the WHO Reform). Civil society comments were
recalled also in the final speech by the Director General who congratulated
them by saying “You have done a lot of work and you could really highlight
the important points” but she didn’t really answered the question posed.

At this point, Dr. Chan summarized the discussion and cleverly clarified
that the EB documents prepared by the Secretariat were not meant to be the
basis for a negotiation, but just an instrument to stimulate the
discussion. She also said: “This is not a decision making time”.

Addressing Member States suggestions and concerns, she grouped the
interventions into two broad categories: process and content.

Concerning the content, she declared to be happy to hear that many
countries agreed that priority setting should give very strong attention to
country needs. Trying to address Member States concerns about the 5
typologies of country and the 7 categories of work, Dr. Chan  declared that
these were just a first attempt to systematize the available information as
well as the current activities of the Organization.

Regarding the process, she fully agreed on the EU proposal to create a
working group to set ToR and the scope for the Member State-driven process.
Moreover she proposed to adopt the first option mentioned in paragraph 55
which means starting the Member States-driven process with a main meeting
to be held in late February. Although this option was fully supported by
many countries, others, especially the furthest (Japan) and the smallest
(Bahamas and Barbados), expressed their concerns on the economical and
human resources sustainability.
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