London: A senior adviser said on Tuesday that the growing number of health emergencies around the world, from COVID-19 to cholera, has “overwhelmed” the World Health Organisation’s response.
Speaking at the UN agency’s annual meeting, Professor Walid Ammar, chair of a committee reviewing the WHO’s emergency response, said funding and staffing shortages were growing due to ever-increasing demands.
,[The] The program has been overstretched as the demands have only increased with the multiplicity and complexity of emergencies,” he said.
A committee report said that as of March this year, WHO was responding to 53 high-level emergencies. These include outbreaks of COVID-19, cholera and Marburg in Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania, as well as humanitarian emergencies such as earthquakes in Turkey and Syria and floods in Pakistan.
The report also states that climate change is increasing the frequency of events such as floods and cyclones, all of which have health consequences.
However, the emergency program’s main budget for 2022-2023 is only about 53% funded, the report found, calling for more stable funding.
The WHO and member states are trying to reform how the agency – and countries – respond to health emergencies, as well as increase WHO funding. On Monday, member states approved a new budget including a 20% hike in their mandatory fees.
The report also called on WHO to seek more efficiencies: in Malawi, for example, four different emergency teams were responding to cholera, COVID-19, polio and floods, which overlap. Could have been, it said.
(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; Editing by Christina Fincher)
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