Global health, aid effectiveness and the changing role of the WHO

Since the 1990s the growing number of actors involved has considerably changed the field of global health governance (GHG). Partnerships between states, international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the WHO, the pharmaceutical industry, and also civil society organizations have helped overcome conflicts between the profit-driven production of medicines and the health needs of poor countries. However, they have also led to a vast entanglement of responsibilities, with the WHO losing its profile as the central authority on global health. In recent years, however, the impacts of the Paris Declaration on GHG and a number of other processes have again strengthened the position of the WHO. (GIGA

applying health promotion principles to a pandemic threat

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Can geopolitics derail the pandemic treaty?

During the pandemic, the world has experienced how the geopolitics of global health have immediate, ruthless repercussions for the lives and livelihoods of billions. The challenge of a pandemic treaty negotiation process is to be responsive to these interconnected levels of geopolitics

Politics or Technocracy – What Next for Global Health? Comment on “Navigating Between Stealth Advocacy and Unconscious Dogmatism: The Challenge of Researching the Norms, Politics and Power of Global Health”

Politics play a central part in determining health and development outcomes as Gorik Ooms highlights in his recent commentary. As health becomes more global and more politicized the need grows to better understand the inherently political processes at all levels of governance, such as ideological positions, ideas, value judgments, and power. I agree that global health research should strengthen its contribution to generating such knowledge by drawing more on political science, such research is gaining ground. Even more important is – as Ooms indicates – that global health scholars better understand their own role in the political process. It is time to acknowledge that expert-based technocratic approaches are no less political. We will need to reflect and analyse the role of experts in global health governance to a greater extent and in that context explore the links between politics, expertise and democrac

Addressing Global Health Governance Challenges through a New Mechanism: The Proposal for a Committee C of the World Health Assembly

In January 2010 the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) called for an “informal consultation on the future of financing for WHO” and in her opening remarks expressed the need to make the WHO fit for purpose given the unique health challenges of the 21st century.Margaret Chan referred to the constitutional role that WHO has to “act as the directing and co-ordinating authority on international health work” and stated clearly that global health leadership today and for the future must be earned through strategic and selective engagement. She said, “WHO can no longer aim to direct and coordinate all of the activities and policies in multiple sectors that influence public health today.” This is a clear challenge that she has put to the global health community in recognition that WHO’s role must be clarified in the face of major change.</jats:p