The World Health Assembly has adopted a historic decision on sustainable WHO funding

Today, at the Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly, member states agreed to adopt a significant decision to improve the World Health Organization’s funding model.

The decision fully adopted the recommendations of the Working Group on Sustainable Financing composed of WHO member states, established in January 2021 and chaired by Björn Kümmel from Germany.

In one of the key recommendations in the report of the Working Group on the Health Assembly, Member States aim to gradually increase their estimated contributions (membership fees) to represent 50% of the WHO core budget by the 2030-2031 budget cycle at the latest. In the last two-year budget period, 2020-2021, the estimated contributions represented only 16% of the approved program budget.

The report includes other recommendations, such as exploring the feasibility of a supplementation mechanism to expand the funding base. It also asks the WHO Secretariat to work with a working group of Member States to strengthen WHO governance, which will make recommendations on transparency, efficiency, accountability and coherence. The work of the working group will help ensure that the increase in estimated contributions from Member States is accompanied by further reforms of the way the Organization operates.

Many experts have identified the current WHO funding model as a risk to the integrity and independence of its work. The WHO’s over-reliance on voluntary contributions, with a large share devoted to specific areas of work, results in a persistent mismatch between organizational priorities and funding opportunities. Today’s recommendations are designed to largely address these shortcomings.

The intention is to start the gradual increase of estimated contributions with the WHO budget for 2024-2025, with a proposed increase of 20% compared to the estimated contributions in the approved basic budget for 2022-23. The goal is to reach 50% of the WHO budget by 2028-2029. if possible, by 2030-31 at the latest, compared to the current 16% in 2020-21. This would mean that by 2028-2029, the WHO would have recorded an increase of approximately $ 600 million per year in the portion of its revenue that comes from the most sustainable and predictable sources.

More predictable and sustainable WHO funding makes economic sense for the Organization’s associates, with their own new investment case ‘Healthy return’ showing that every US dollar invested in the WHO brings a return on investment of at least US $ 35. Sustainable funding will better equip the WHO to provide more efficient services to all its Member States and their populations, for example through long-term programs in countries and attracting and retaining expertise.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “This decision directly addresses the decades-long challenge facing the WHO in terms of predictable, flexible and sustainable funding. Meeting the goals agreed today will mean that our member states empower the WHO to meet their expectations and truly fulfill our mandate as the world’s leading health authority. ” “On the day of my re-election, this decision gives all of us in the WHO a renewed confidence as we face the future,” he added.

Björn Kümmel, Deputy Head of the Global Health Department at the German Federal Ministry of Health and Chairman of the WHO Working Group on Sustainable Financing, said: “This decision concerns nothing less than the future role of the WHO in global health. Even beyond that, this is what we envisage for the global health architecture: less fragmented, better coordinated, more efficient and truly inclusive global health governance with a fundamentally strengthened WHO at its heart as an enabling leading and coordinating authority. ”