WHO Over-Extended, Not Performing Well Enough: Chan
The World Health Organization (WHO = Verdenssund-hedsorganisationen) is not performing well enough across the board because it is over-extended (skal nå for meget) and needs to trim the scope of its operations, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said on Monday.
In a critical assessment of the UN body she has headed since 2006, Chan described wasteful overlap with other health financiers and said the WHO needed to concentrate on areas where it can make the most impact.
While it has been very effective in some areas, including the battle against tropical diseases, “this is not the case in all the areas covered by our last program of work”, Chan said.
– WHO needs to change at the administrative, budgetary and programmatic levels. We do not need to change the Constitution, but we do need to undergo some far-reaching reforms, she stated.
Chan also warned Monday that the health community needs to tackle strong and “worrisome” public mistrust of vaccines, following signs of a tail-off in flu (influenza) vaccination.
Chan told the WHO’s executive board that the take up of flu vaccine this season appeared to have suffered, while some countries in the northern hemisphere were seeing “severe” cases of H1N1 influenza in a younger age group.
A study by the WHO in 2009 estimated that the rate of incomplete childhood vaccination stood at a stunning 44 percent.
Meanwhile, new Oxford University-led research published in the International Journal of Health Services concluded, that poor countries which borrow from the International Monetary Fund are spending just one cent in every dollar received in health aid on actually improving the medical care of their populations.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
