New WHO chief pledges to strengthen fundraising capacity

The new director general of the World Health Organization has said that it must focus on new ways of fundraising.

In his first press conference after his election by the World Health Assembly on 23 May, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was asked about the implications for WHO of cuts to the US diplomacy and aid budgets of nearly $19bn (£14.7bn; €17bn) announced this week. Analysis by the US based think tank the Kaiser Family Foundation has shown that the US is the largest state donor to WHO, providing 16% of WHO’s budget in 2016,1 at a total of $341m. The largest single donor was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Tedros, former minister of health in Ethiopia, told reporters that securing money from organisations such as the Gavi Vaccine Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, should be a higher priority than securing funding from individual countries.

He also said that he wanted WHO to emulate the successful fundraising unit of the United Nations’ children’s agency, Unicef.

“We need to strengthen the capacity of the fundraising unit, both in terms of the number [of people] and also in terms of the skills. Unicef has a very strong capacity. We need to look at what we can learn from Unicef and other similar UN agencies and build the capacity,” he said.

Tedros added that discussion of assessed contributions—those made by individual member states—should take place not just once a year at the World Health Assembly but also at regional and sub-regional levels.

He said that he had worked with Republicans and Democrats over the years, both in his capacity as minister of health and as chair of the Global Fund, and was willing to engage with the US administration. He said that the question of funding was not a “closed issue.”

Tedros takes over the top job at WHO from Margaret Chan, who has served for 10 years. He was one of three shortlisted candidates, beating David Nabarro (UK) and Sania Nishtar (Pakistan).

Tedros said that other priorities included ensuring the introduction of universal health coverage around the world and the implementation of WHO’s emergency response programme. He said that countries should be free to implement universal health coverage as they see fit, with no one-size-fits-all approach. On emergency response, he said, “We have a new programme; the issue now is we have to implement it with a sense of urgency.”

Michel Sidibé, executive director of the UNAIDS programme, welcomed Tedros’s election as director general.

“Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is a driving force for change with vast experience and expertise in global health. He is a dynamic leader, an excellent convener and shares our ambition to end AIDS as part of the sustainable development goals,” he said.

Mohga Kamal-Yanni, Oxfam’s senior health adviser, said that championing universal health coverage should be at the top of Tedros’s “to-do list, including an end to user fees and high medicine prices that mean millions of people are pushed into poverty to pay health costs or miss out on treatment altogether.”

She added, “The WHO has a vital role to play in making medicines available and affordable for all who need them, including promoting new models to fund innovative research and development, to avoid unnecessary deaths across the world.”