Corporate takeover of WHO

There is little to cheer about Health Minister J P Nadda’s appointment as the new President of the 68th World Health Assembly, the supreme decision-making body in the World Health Organisation (WHO). The cause of concern for the common man, the beneficiary of several WHO-sponsored health programmes, is expressed by a group of 33 civil society organisations over the possibility of growing corporate influences creeping into the working of WHO, which may result in compromising the independence, integrity, and credibility of the institution. 

Since the 1990s, a freeze on assessed contributions due to pressure from the US has led to untied funds being reduced to a fifth of WHO’s total budget. To make good the loss, voluntary contributions, mostly from the UK, the US and Canada, have been mobilised, forming 80 per cent of the WHO funds. The fact that a deputation of top health officials from the private sector works with WHO and that salaries of a few WHO personnel are allegedly paid by MNCs has raised further doubts about the integrity of the organisation. To top it, close to 90 per cent of such voluntary funds are tightly earmarked for specific programmes that the donors support, in a kind of quid pro quo. During the 2014 Ebola crisis, the compromised stance of WHO diluted the credibility of the organisation in the eyes of the African nations. 

Over the last four years though, WHO has been claiming to bring in reforms by addressing its inefficiencies. Its functioning offers evidence that these shortcomings are largely a result of WHO's financial crisis brought on by the freeze on assessed contributions. Commercial interests of big corporations are met under WHO’s ‘watchful eyes’ by intensively marketed cheap ultra-processed foods which result in increased incidence of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. One hopes, as the president of WHO, Nadda will take a stand for the benefit of the developing world and not to fill the coffers of a few pharmaceutical MNCs.