'New momentum' to overhaul WHO financing

There is “new momentum” to reform how the World Health Organization is funded, according to the chair of a member state group on sustainable financing. Björn Kümmel, who is also an official at Germany's health ministry, told a Devex panel that a common thread had emerged from his group’s exchanges with the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, Global Preparedness Monitoring Board and other experts. “They all said the complete system is rotten, so you shouldn't try to reform a small bit here and a small bit there,” Kümmel said. “The way we all finance WHO doesn't make much sense to them because it's unpredictable and it makes it very, very hard to adapt to emerging challenges and outbreaks.” Kümmel said that less than 20% of WHO’s roughly $5 billion biennial budget is predictable, hindering the organization’s ability to plan ahead. The IPPR argued in its recent report that WHO’s core mandate should be financed through a membership fee increase, and also partly via a replenishment model. “I think that after the World Health Assembly, we will be inspired by these recommendations,” Kümmel said. Suerie Moon, co-director at the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, told the same panel that she was not sold on the replenishment model for WHO. She pointed out that other organizations that use a replenishment model for funding, like GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund, are financing rather than norm-setting institutions. “I take the point that that's a way to mobilize every few years a lot of energy and excitement about the organization,” she said. “But I think we have to think very carefully about how is this a unique intergovernmental organization that is different from any other global health initiative out there.”