Offline: A renaissance in WHO's regions

摘要

The Regional Offices of WHO—there are six of them: in Copenhagen, Manila, New Delhi, Brazzaville, Cairo, and Washington, DC—are easy targets for criticism. Here is what sceptics often say. The Regional Offices of WHO are bureaucratic fiefdoms of power-loving Regional Directors (RDs), who have mostly been elected through outright bribery. Regional Offices obstruct, rather than facilitate, the advance of health in countries. They compete with Geneva and rival the Director-General of WHO for influence and resources. Since RDs are elected and not appointed, they feel they have the right to ignore Geneva and indulge their own interests, which often centre on personal enrichment and winning re-election. RDs are unaccountable to countries (indeed, to anyone). Ultimately, the only sure fact about WHO's Regional Offices is that they dilute the overall effectiveness of the agency, leaving it vulnerable to attack by those hostile to multilateral institutions. While Regional Offices fiddle, these sceptics argue, WHO burns. Although this view may have been true 20 years ago, it is certainly not true today—at least, not in all WHO regions.