Day 1 of World Health Assembly highlights why WHO is crucial for universal health

Health as an agenda in Sustainable Development Goals dominated discussions on first day

The first day of the World Health Assembly (WHA) began with a surprise, at least for me. India's health minister J P Nadda was chosen as the president of the assembly. The rest of the day, however, was full of talks ranging from Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany to Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). While the former asked for a plan to deal with “catastrophes” like Ebola, Chan later revealed in her speech that WHO is already in the process of creating a single new WHO programme for health emergencies. Besides, J P Nadda talked about World Yoga day.

It might have been the beginning of the assembly but it is quite clear what issues are important for WHO and would set the pace for the coming days. Ebola, role on non-state actors, reforms, transition from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and antimicrobial resistance were high on agenda.

As it happens

Here's how things work at the WHA. After the inauguration the agenda is covered under two committees – A and B. The first one deals with technical issues and the second one with administrative. The discussions begin with talks about reforms. This time, the issue of Ebola was taken up often in the comments by the delegates. Each and every country agreed that WHO has a crucial role in the taking care of health of the world. Germany mentioned that WHO is needed more after the Ebola crisis. The representative ended with the prophecy that the future of WHO would be decided in the next two years. But there were some different observations too. For example, WHO was advised to increase capacity of the regional offices as this is where the first response takes place. There was a call for more transparency and accountability. It was also pointed out that the reform process was slow and that it would be good if a timeline was set down. The whole issue is linked to the money that WHO gets from member states.

The assembly is also holding a technical meeting every day. First day’s meeting was on health in post 2015 sustainable development goals. The meeting in itself was not too engaging but a few figures are interesting. While in MDGs, six out of 21 targets are related to health, SDGs have 13 out of 169 targets that are health-related. The most crucial thing about setting the goals is to find suitable indicators to show that these work. In her speech, Chan mentioned a WHO-World Bank report that would be released in June and shows that Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is quantifiable and that progress towards its key objectives, namely coverage with health services and financial protection, could be used as an indicator. It is another thing that such UHC is detrimental to the growth of public health system. Chan, however, did not mention this.

The outcome of the assembly is crucial this time as this is the last year of office for the Margaret Chan. The civil society is worried that some resolutions like the one on role of non-state actors would be pushed as the DG is interested in them despite the fact that the issue of conflict of interest has not been resolved so far.

Down to earth 68 World Health Assembly