Can WHO bring speed and predictability to emergency work?

Director-General Margaret Chan’s promise a year ago of creating a single program for health emergencies is coming together, but it will require strong support from across three levels of the organization as well as member states.

At this week’s World Health Assembly, the World Health Organization chief will be presenting before member states the agency’s progress report on the design, implementation plan and other requirements of its new health emergencies program, borne in response to calls a year ago by the WHO’s executive board to strengthen emergency operational capabilities. Some of the functions are already being tested, though the unveiling of the full program will take place from 2016 to 2019.

Health experts and humanitarian organizations, Médecins Sans Frontières being among the most vocal, heavily criticized the pace of WHO’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the ensuing panels and committees all arrived at the conclusion that change was needed at the U.N.’s health agency.

The new health emergencies program, in the director-general’s words, is designed to “bring speed and predictability to WHO’s emergency work.” It will be a single program with “one clear line of authority, one workforce, one budget, one set of rules and processes, and one set of standard performance metrics.”