With WHO in crisis, prioritization can’t wait, warns German official

Facing a significant funding loss with the exit of its biggest contributor, the World Health Organization and its member states will have to decide in the coming months what functions of the agency they should prioritize.

“It's needed now more than ever,” Björn Kümmel, head of global health at the German Federal Ministry of Health, said in an interview with Dr. Søren Brostrøm, the WHO director of transformation.

“I think that we have not done a great job over the last decades to clarify what is the core of WHO’s mandate, from my point of view, and also … what is the comparative advantage of WHO? What are the functions that only WHO can perform, and nobody else?” he said.

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