PHM-Exch> WHO's first investment case

[Claudio Schuftan]

Global Health Governance is under real threat from vested interests.



The WHO has recently produced a report, announced with some fanfare (
http://www.who.int/news-room/detail/19-09-2018-who-launches-first-investment-case-to-save-up-to-30-million-lives),
astonishingly providing a ‘Business Case’ for the existence of the WHO!



Two things are striking about the report – firstly, the language of the
report, which purports to lay the basis for “a stronger, more efficient,
and results-oriented WHO” which “highlights new mechanisms to measure
success, ensuring a strict model of accountability, and sets ambitious
targets for savings and efficiencies.”  It seems the language of the
private sector – cost containment, efficiency (at the expense of equity)
and managerialism is now de rigueur at a UN institution. There is nothing
wrong with efficiency or containing cost but if those are the only
principles driving a ‘business case’, we can see the ascendancy of Private
Sector interests. I want to see a WHO that makes equity and human rights a
central platform of its work – and, as we know, efficiency and
managerialism sometimes comes at the expense of equity and social justice.
There are no doubt valid criticisms to be made of the WHO, but the idea
that the solution lies in the application of New Public Management is a
political choice, rather than a necessary outcome of clear analysis.



The second amazing implication is that the WHO is now pleading for funding
that it is supposed to be entitled to – pleading to the same powerful
actors who have starved the WHO of its budgets for years and allowed the
Private Sector to grasp the tiller of Global Governance with both hands! No
wonder there is little challenge to the idea that “the question is no
longer whether to engage or not with the PS, but instead how we will
engage.”  Such is the sorry state of global governance (in health).
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20181003/eb52f8e0/attachment.html>