Syed Wajahat Ali
In 1946, following the agony incurred by World War 2, 51 Members of the United Nations and of 10 other nations signed the constitution of the World Health Organization (enforced on 7 April 1948) during an International Health Conference in New York City. The first Health Assembly opened in Geneva on 24 June 1948 with delegations from 53 Member States constituted WHO, which turned 72 in 2020: an evolution full of accomplishments, mistakes, reforms, and cooperation.
Amid the COVID-19 outbreak worldwide, US President Donald Trump’s call to suspend the WHO’s financial assistance echoed no less than any pandemic in the developing world. The developing nations inevitably depend on international cooperation for adequate resources and regulations in public health.
The sum of the national health budgets of Pakistan ($0.8 billion), Bangladesh ($2.98 billion), Egypt ($7.8 billion), and Nigeria ($0.1 billion) is less than the total acquisition cost of USS Gerald R. Ford-CVN-78 ($13 billion), a US warship out of many others sailing across the world. More than 678 million people live in these four countries.
Approximately, 1.7 million people die of diarrheal diseases annually due to sub-standard sanitation and unsafe drinking water in the developing world. About 1.6 million die of respiratory diseases caused by poor ventilation. Malaria kills 1.2 million annually mostly African children. About 1.2 million annual deaths are recorded because of improper road safety networks in low and middle-income countries. Estimated 355000 people lose their lives due to food and pesticide poisoning in Africa and South Asia.
The right to live is a prerequisite to the Right to Development (RTD) –a neglected notion in the US foreign policy considering the current regime’s demeaning take on the role of diversity and political correctness in domestic as well as in the international politics.
However, many academics and analysts think otherwise. “The developed nations have a duty not only to share our wealth but also to encourage sources that produce wealth: economic freedom, political liberty, the rule of law and human rights”, François-Xavier, the Professor of Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health asserts.
An access to essential health services and preventions is a fundamental human right of every citizen of the globe, he adds. The nations having massive differences between their health infrastructures look differently at the role of WHO in tracking the Sustainable Development Goal of health and well-being for all within the scope of the 13th General Program of Work. The organization envisions “to advocate and catalyze global and country actions to resolve the human resources for health crisis, to support the achievement of the health-related millennium development goals and health for all “. There are many success stories to be reckoned with.
The WHO stimulated government spending on health services in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. It played a significant role in developing health systems using interventions like awareness campaigns, research funding and logistics, standard health training manuals, and collaborative frameworks with local governments to enhance the capacity of the resource-deficient health departments.
In 2018-19 only, the WHO responded to 481 health emergencies in 141 countries including the outbreaks of Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the world’s worst cholera outbreak in Yemen with more than 1.2 million cases, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the Republic of Korea, and wild poliovirus in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Apart from direct funding to the government of Congo, for example, the WHO set up base camps, operations centers, treatment units, mobile laboratories, and surveillance, and provided 60 000 doses of a new, experimental vaccine as well as a rapid diagnostic test kits.
Putting WHO in the dock, a body already running on a shoestring due to coronavirus pandemic which has infected 2 million people and fractured the most advanced health care systems, is nothing but an attempt to escape the tragic failure of the world’s governments in general, and the US in particular, in prioritizing human life at the top of their resource allocation frameworks.
The United Nations and auxiliaries are not aliens. They derive their strength from the resource, enterprise, and vigilance of the member countries. The COVID-19 pandemic could be a turning moment for the UN to re-envision its operational architecture and to design sustainable financial models ensuring more independence, continuity, and efficiency in agenda-setting and execution.
