World Health Organisation Should Outsource Key Duties, Experts Say

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Global public health experts have called for “fundamental and extensive reform” of the World Health Organisation (WHO) including major outsourcing of key activities, warning that the organisation is already at risk of repeating the mistakes it made in handling the Ebola crisis.

Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Professor Joel Negin of the University of Sydney and Dr Ranu Dhillon of Harvard Medical School say that only radical reform of the organisation will ensure it can get sufficient funding in the coming years and tackle public health crises.

Negin describes the current WHO response to an outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Papua New Guinea as having a “similar pattern” to the Ebola catastrophe.

“They are being slow in their response, not taking it as seriously as some others suggest they should. Some on the ground are saying this is like Ebola with wings, and we have a potentially cavalier attitude from the WHO,” he says.

Source: The Guardian (link opens in a new window)

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Health Care
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public health