The World Health Organization: no game of thrones

Have you heard of the World Health Assembly? Do you have any idea of its purpose or any sense of its effectiveness? Even people who have attended the annual meeting of the 194 member states of the World Health Organization might struggle to answer the second of those questions. The arena at the Palais de Nations in Geneva, where the assembly is held, is designed for important decisions about international health, such as how to respond to the threat of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus or the prioritisation of rapid diagnostic tests for malaria (doi:10.1136/bmj.g4123, doi:10.1136/bmj.g3846, doi:10.1136/bmj.g3730). Politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats, technocrats, business people, and interpreters—mostly the rulers in the …