Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
World Health Organization Unveils Overdue Reforms, But Many Wonder If That Can Fix Group's 'Birth Defect'
The New York Times: W.H.O. Chief Plans To Reorganize A Vast Bureaucracy
The World Health Organization on Wednesday announced a long-awaited restructuring intended to streamline the agency — and strongly hinted that it intended to shake up some staffers’ resistance to change. The announcement, made in a lengthy and mostly cheerful speech delivered jointly by the organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the directors of the agency’s six regional offices, aims to serve the W.H.O.’s new targets: to get affordable health care to the world’s poorest 1 billion people; to better protect them against epidemics; and to help them enjoy better health, including protection from noncommunicable diseases like cancer. (McNeil, 3/6)
Reuters: WHO Chief Unveils Reforms, With More Science, Apps And An Academy
His back-to-basics approach won fervent support among health ministers, partly reflecting the WHO's failure in 2014 to seize on what became the world's worst Ebola outbreak, and the fact that many of the 11,300 deaths in that outbreak would have been prevented by better primary healthcare in West Africa. Announcing the reforms, Tedros told WHO staff that UHC is the "WHO's top priority, and is central to everything we do". (UHC). (3/6)
