Reuters: The World Health Organization’s critical challenge: healing itself
“…Public health specialists, non-governmental organizations, and some of the WHO’s biggest donors say the organization is unwieldy, poor at coordinating responses to epidemics, and too thinly spread. And increasingly it struggles to set its own priorities because many of its donors give it money earmarked for specific projects. Some experts inside and outside the organization say those flaws mean the WHO’s lead role in global health is now at risk. … Reuters spoke to more than a dozen people who know the WHO and its leadership well. All said the world needs the WHO to succeed…” (Kelland, 2/8).

Reuters: Lives at risk unless WHO reforms, U.N. report says
“The World Health Organization needs urgent reform to boost its ability to respond to crises, and failure to act now could cost thousands of lives, according to an advance copy of a high-level U.N. report. The report, entitled ‘Protecting Humanity from Future Health Crises,’ is the latest in a series of reviews by global health experts which have been sharply critical of the WHO’s response to the devastating Ebola epidemic in West Africa. ‘This may be the last opportunity to ensure the WHO is empowered’ to build an effective emergency response capacity, warned an advance, unedited copy of the report by a U.N. panel, made available online over the weekend in a link on the United Nations’ Daily Journal website…” (Kelland, 2/8).