Ebola recently killed 19 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is focused on their war against trans fats.
Viruses don’t stop at borders, and therefore global action and coordination is vital to combating some of the biggest biological threats to human life. Fortunately, the United Nations established the WHO in 1948 to tackle this very issue. Except for one thing: WHO has grown like a bureaucratic infection in its own right, prioritizing initiatives against non-communicable diseases at the expense of human lives lost to viruses such as Ebola. WHO must prioritize their fundamental services and if they don’t, they should be defunded.
While transmissible and communicable diseases such as Ebola, AIDS, and influenza are a nightmare for global health experts, WHO isn’t much help. The multi-billion dollar organization now mainly makes headlines by wasting taxpayers dollars, praising dictators, being undemocratic, and failing at its core mission.
Slower than the news
One of the most upsetting examples of the WHO’s misguided focus is the 2014 Ebola crisis. While the first Ebola cases in Guinea were already reported in late 2013, it took then-WHO Director-General Margaret Chan until August 2014 to declare the outbreak an international emergency. This was two months after the world watched hourly news reports from CNN and BBC covering the crises.
While internal memos conclude that WHO was aware of the Ebola outbreak in early spring 2014, its leadership had other priorities. WHO was reluctant to upset local West African dictators with Ebola crisis management and instead focused on ideological campaigns in the region.
That same year, WHO published a report on fighting tobacco, choosing to ignore Ebola in Guinea. The report was fixated on women employed in tobacco. The global response body saw a problem with “attractive young women hired by tobacco companies as marketing executives… whose duty is to promote cigarettes at nightclubs.” Bizarrely, WHO has a bigger problem with women in developing countries making their own living than they do a virus that has the potential to wipe out humanity.
Three months after WHO finally acted on Ebola, Margaret Chan spoke at the sixth Conference of the Parties of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Moscow and declared tobacco control as the organization’s biggest priority. Chan conveniently left out the massive shortcomings of WHO in dealing with Ebola. She also underlined WHO’s ignorance towards harm reduction innovations such as electronic cigarettes by claiming they are not willing to allow consumers to switch to less harmful nicotine products.
Not much has changed since then, considering WHO reported the new Ebola infections at the same time they launched a campaign against trans fats. It’s clear the organization isn’t focused on its core mission.
Openness behind closed doors
At the 2016 FCTC COP7 in Delhi, a few hand-picked conference observers were able to see how taxpayer-funded Western delegations applauded the Iranian delegation for their “brave” fight against non-communicable diseases such as tobacco use. Observers also saw how detached these regulators are as they discussed the prioritization of smoking policies in war-torn Syria. For observers like us, it was impossible to monitor the conference. The delegates moved to a so-called “open session” in which all observers and journalists were asked to leave, enabling the remainder of the conference to take place behind closed doors.
Schmoozing with dictators
Sympathizing with autocratic and corrupt governments at the Delhi conference was not an isolated incident. Recently elected WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom was quick to name Zimbabwe’s long-time dictator Robert Mugabe a “Goodwill Ambassador” of WHO. Fortunately, massive public backlash made him reverse that decision within days.
Sky-high travel costs
The Washington Post reported last year that WHO spends $200 million a year on travel for its staffers. That’s $28,500 per staffer, or the per capita GDP of developed countries like Spain or Italy. While WHO has vowed to be more careful with travel expenses, the recent African delegation trip to the stunning Coral Strand Hotel in the Seychelles shows that these are merely empty promises.
WHO needs to focus on its core priority, responding to international health crises. Western democracies are the main funders of WHO. Taxpayers in countries like the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom should demand more transparency and accountability within WHO.
If pariahs like Robert Mugabe and the Iranian government keep dominating this vital tool for global health, it might be time to defund WHO, transfer some of its vital functions to a more effective organization such as the World Bank, or start a new organization focusing on health crisis response. Global health is too important to leave in the hands of the current WHO.
Fred Roeder is a Health Economist and the Managing Director of the Consumer Choice Center. Dr. Wolf von Laer holds a PhD from King’s College London and is CEO of Students For Liberty.
