It’s been a banner week for the World Health Organization (WHO), the lavishly funded global health agency that somehow botched the biggest health crisis in years back in 2014, when it failed to respond to the Ebola crisis that was then ravaging west Africa. (Oh, and the AP reported this week that the WHO spends more on its travel budget than it does on the fight against AIDS.)
First, the WHO barred Taiwan from attending this week’s World Health Assembly in Geneva, which it had attended previously as an observer. Eleven countries rallied to Taiwan’s defense, demanding the democratic bastion be granted entree. But the WHO sided with the two dictatorships—mainland China and Cuba—which demanded it be banned.
Now, the WHO has named North Korea as one its five vice presidents for this year’s confab. It’s an odd choice, to be sure, given that North Korea has by far the lowest life expectancy in Northeast Asia; a collapsing health care system; and a raging TB problem. And indeed, what doctors North Korea does have are often sent abroad to work and send home cash to the regime. Indeed, a North Korean doctor was kidnapped in Libya, of all places, back in 2015.
This isn’t the first time that the WHO has appeared strangely sympathetic to North Korea, a state which systematically denies rights to its citizens. Outgoing WHO head Margaret Chan has a bizarre affinity for the Stalinist state, one that occasionally reaches Bill Richardson-like proportions. Back in 2010, she visited the chronically malnourished nation and lauded its lack of obesity. (h/t Joshua Stanton.) On the same trip, she extolled the dictatorship’s “notable public health achievements.” Perhaps Taiwan should take its lack of invitation as a blessing.
