The view from my office in the WHO. It's quite distracting. Today I went to a WHO induction class that gave new staff and interns an overview of the organization, how it was formed and how it works. The short of it is the WHO is a politically neutral (not always a noble thing) entity of member nations that seeks to attain "the highest degree of health for all persons."
As you can guess, the WHO provides the most aid to the countries with the poorest health. These are generally the poorest countries. Director General, Margaret Chan, has identified the two populations by which the WHO will benchmark its progress: women and the people of Africa. I asked, how is this being 'neutral' if you are going to focus your efforts on specific peoples. But the presenters gave me an answer to the effect of "you should ask the Margaret Chan when you meet her." haha. Women in developing countries and the people of Africa are no doubt in need of aid, but I just wanted to know if that meant we were possibly short changing say children in Iraq or people in other poverty-stricken areas.
Also of note, the WHO charges membership fees from each of its member nations to fund its operations. The poor countries don't really pay and mostly receive aid. Nations pay based on population and affluence, so the U.S. is at the top of the list funding nearly 25% of the WHO's operational costs. In addition, there are funds from non-governmental sources such as the Gates foundation. You can bet the US is once again leading the pack.
I'm kind of proud of the U.S. for being a leader in pursuing high ideals. I was also pleased to find that, at least in the realm of health, politics did not seem to play a big factor. Strategic Objectives put forth by the WHO Executive Board generally don't get put to a vote because everyone can more or less agree on these basic health issues. Doesn't that have a nice utopian ring to it? Of course we know that politics really does cripple healthcare. Take the US healthcare system confounder. I haven't seen the Sicko documentary, but it's been getting good reviews. Can anyone report back to me about it? Or better yet...save it, so you can watch it with me when I get back!
2 comments:
its good to know us American's are doing something right in the world ^_-(as far as funding is concerned). And good for you for asking that question. I would wonder the same thing.. "what about all of the other poverty stricken nations?".. but I'm sure they try to aid as many as they can :). btw I haven't tried it yet, but my friend sent me a link for Sicko. Apparently Michael Moore doesn't care about it being spread on the internet (or so my friend says). I'll email you the link :).
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