WHO - World Health Organization

12/11/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 12/11/2024 11:01

Donors making a difference: Transforming WHO

With 2024 coming to a close, and the WHO Investment Round gaining speed and support, WHO is looking at ways in which we have delivered on our far-reaching Transformation Agenda that launched with the arrival of Dr Tedros back in 2017. WHO's transformation was conceived in order to make a measurable difference in people's health and to deliver the bold objectives of GPW13.

Amongst the many initiatives we embarked on, WHO committed to doing more and better in:

  • promoting science for health;
  • improving accountability and transparency in our performance;
  • professionalizing our supply chain;
  • shaping the global conversation on public health with strong partnerships, building a lifelong learning platform, and;
  • preparing tomorrow's global health leaders.

This end-of-2024 story presents a snapshot of how WHO advanced these commitments.

Securing predictable financing so that WHO can deliver on Member States' expectation

The Transformation Agenda challenged WHO to adopt a new resource mobilization approach to secure predictable financing. Member States took this up, resulting in the ground-breaking approval to increase their assessed contributions to cover 50% of WHO's base budget by 2030. It also launched the first-ever WHO Investment Round in May 2024. This unleashed a series of global engagements and events, culminating at the end of 2024 with a major pledging event hosted by Brazil around the G20 Leaders' Summit.

The Investment Round is the implementation of one of the key recommendations of the Member State-led WHO Working Group on Sustainable Financing. It was approved by Member States in order to make WHO a predictably, sustainably, flexibly funded Organization. The Group's recommendation calls for a commitment to global health through the full funding of WHO's Fourteenth General Programme of Work (#GPW14) goals (2025-2028) with Member States' annual contributions and Voluntary Contributions to fill the US$7.1 billion budget gap.

Harnessing health science

A new Science Division was established at WHO Headquarters just before COVID-19 hit. It aims to ensure a more systematic approach to research prioritization across the Organization. During the pandemic, in an era of scrutiny of health-related science, the new division was mandated to drive research and innovation to set the global health agenda and to help build trust and transparency.

"Suddenly society is interested in science, and that comes with challenges…that is to be welcomed; science is not in an ivory tower," said Dr Jeremy Farrar, WHO Chief Scientist. He explained the bedrock of health, economy and national security lies in a strong science base at country and regional levels.

With the support of Member States, and collaborations with partners and key public health stakeholders, the Science Division helps WHO strengthen its core capacity to provide scientific advice, technical guidance, and support for countries to keep the world safe from existing and emerging health threats.

Read more: WHO harnessing science


Institute of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (IHMT), Portugal 2024. Photo by WHO/Khaled Mostafa

Measuring and reporting to build trust

The Transformation Agenda has brought a stronger focus on building trust between the Secretariat, Member States, donors, and other stakeholders. This has been achieved through more accountability and transparency in reporting on performance and more effort to achieve WHO's strategic goals mandated by Member States.

"If there is no trust in the Organization, we will not be able to attract resources and implement the programmes that we set out to do," said Imre Hollo, WHO Director of Strategic Planning and Budget.

A WHO Output Scorecard was rolled out for WHO's 2020-21 Programme Budget to collect quantitative and qualitative data on key strategic areas. It shows how the Organization is contributing to the achievement of the Triple Billion targets. The scorecard is both a report and a resource that allows readers to see big-picture progress and to zoom in at key elements of different WHO programmes. WHO continues to improve the scorecard to better highlight improved leadership, impact at the country level, and effective normative work such as delivery of technical products and global public health goods.

Read more: Measurement and reporting builds trust


74th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for WPRO 2023. Photo by WHO/Romwell Mari Sanchez

Professionalizing WHO's supply chain

WHO doubled its volume of procured goods and services after the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming the fifth largest procurer in the UN system spending around US$1.5 billion a year. As part of its Transformation Agenda, it is consolidating and developing processes and identifying new competencies to build a more holistic and professional supply chain.

"How we spend our money and who we spend it with has huge impact," underscored Ms Angela Kastner, WHO Director of Procurement and Supply Services.

WHO's new Business Management System (BMS) has integrated key tools that facilitate a more functional supply chain. The BMS is critical in helping the Organization implement a seamless end-to-end supply chain function, deliver responsible and resilient emergency supplies, and achieve operational excellence in procurement and supply chain.

One of the tools to make the biggest difference is the transport and logistics module (TMS) of the BMS that allows countries to have real-time tracking, streamlined approval processes, and more visibility on the pipeline of products.

WHO has also developed a global procurement dashboard, a new procurement policy that includes emergency-specific aspects, item coding for better inventory-keeping, and a green light customs clearance process to speed up the delivery of supplies.

WHO continuously integrates technology to professionalize its procurement process. These changes have reduced time and costs, increasing impact at country level. WHO has also achieved more accountability thanks to Key Performance Indicators that allow tracking performance against speed, time, and cost targets.

Read more: Professionalizing WHO's supply chain


WHO Logistics and Operations Officer, Paul Otwani tracking delivery of WHO emergency medical supplies to a warehouse in Beirut, Lebanon, 2024. Photo by WHO/Christopher Black

Leading global conversations on health

Health is a political choice and just one of many topics on the agenda at the world's largest political gatherings. Since 2019, and also accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO has garnered significant visibility around global health issues.

To harness this potential, in 2019 WHO created a new function of Director-General's Envoy for Multilateral Affairs (EMA) as a critical element of WHO's Transformation Agenda.

"The team aims to support engagement at the highest level of the Organization with political, high-level fora which have a broader political remit, to ensure health is high on the international agenda," said Ms Stéphanie Seydoux, Director-General's Envoy for Multilateral Affairs.

The team coordinates more than 15 high-level global multilateral engagements to strengthen WHO's health diplomacy and ensure health is considered as an integral part of all significant global issues.

This wide-ranging approach, including working with country representatives such as Ministers of Health helps ensure health stays high on the political agenda. It drives progress towards universal health coverage and Sustainable Development Goal 3: to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. The process also supports negotiations toward a pandemic agreement and WHO's first-ever Investment Round to encourage donor contributions and ensure its success.

Read more: Shaping the global conversation on health


WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, attends the Global Nursing Leadership Initiative in Geneva, 2024. Photo by WHO/Violaine Martin

Building partnerships for public health

Maintaining strong partnerships underpins all of WHO's core functions. WHO reforms set out to deepen existing relationships and nurture new partnerships with youth, civil society, parliaments, and the private sector.

In 2023, WHO launched a Civil Society Commission focusing on country-level work, and the WHO Youth Council to amplify youth voices and channels the concerns of young people. Both of these platforms support more meaningfully and systematically integration of key stakeholders' concerns and interests into WHO's work. The WHO Youth Delegate Programme further encourages Member States to include young delegates to conferences and meetings, and the Global Model WHO targets 350 high-school and university students to negotiate in student-led public health simulations to give insight to Member States into young people's concerns and ideas on important health topics.

"Young people are the most underrepresented group in governance, yet half of the world's population is aged under 30. It is high time we engage them and incorporate their solutions for a healthier way forward. The Youth Council and its constituent organizations, working with WHO, is committed to charting this healthier course for the present and future," said Rehman Hassan, a WHO Youth Council Member from the Act4Food campaign of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN).

WHO also strengthened its engagement with parliaments and fosters corporate partnerships with tech companies to provide credible health-related information to the public.

Read more: Building partnerships for public health


Sallay Carew, Sierra Leone's national focal point on community engagement for cervical cancer, speaks to WHO staff, 2024. A big part of Sallay's role is to ensure cervical cancer awareness and how screening saves lives. When she's not in clinics, she goes out in the streets, calling women to get screened. Photo by WHO/Jin Ni

Shaping future leaders at WHO

For WHO, reform also meant deeper reflection on its own workforce challenges. At the heart of the Transformation Agenda, WHO overhauled its Global Internship Programme which helps shape future health leaders and builds stronger country health systems by contributing to a future competent and dynamic global workforce.

The World Health Assembly (WHA) mandated a goal that of 50% of interns should originate from low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) by 2022. WHO has worked hard to make the Programme more equitable and accessible and introduced a centralized application process and a cost-of-living allowance for eligible interns.

In 2023, 80 interns were selected of whom 75% were female and 63% were from LMICs. Interns meet regularly with the Director-General, and the Organization is fully dedicated to making sure the Global Internship Programme is a sustainable success.

Read more: Shaping future leaders at WHO


WHO hosted a youth-led simulation of the World Health Assembly in 2024. The Global Model gathered over 350 youth delegates from more than 50 countries from all WHO Regions to experience the world's peak health decision making body, and engage directly with pressing global health issues. Photo by WHO/Violaine Martin

Building a lifelong learning platform: the WHO Academy

The WHO Academy launches in December 2024, as a unique and important global source of knowledge and expertise for health and care workers, teachers, students, policy makers and the public.

The facility is based in Lyon, France, and is supported by the national and local governments of France. The Academy demonstrates that; WHO is a learning Organization, and also promotes lifelong learning in the health sector, supporting efforts to strive for the highest possible level of health for all.

"The Transformation aimed to make WHO stronger, more effective and faster in responding to the needs of Member States. Within that vision, learning was an important component," said Dr David Atchoarena, Executive Director of the WHO Academy.

With universal access and the need to take local contexts into account being paramount, WHO made the primary delivery of learning online and offered it free as a global public good. WHO is also working to allow offline access for learners in rural or remote areas with limited connectivity.

Read more: WHO Academy, building a lifelong learning platform


Midwife Rahmi (Mimi), performs a prenatal ultrasound to check the health of Inawati's baby at the Pala Island Village Health Post in Indonesia, 2024. Photo by WHO/Harrison Thane

Investing in a transformed WHO

WHO has taken a new approach to resource mobilization as part of rapid reforms. Along with a new resource mobilization strategy, the WHO investment case 2025-2028 showed that the Organization, working with Member States and partners, will save 40 million lives over the next four years, with an estimated return on investment of US$ 35 for every dollar spent.

"The investment case for WHO is clear. We need a strong WHO to make the world a safer place," said Catharina Boehme, WHO Assistant Director-General for External Relations and Governance.

With around 16% of WHO's budget supported through Member States assessed contributions, it is evident that the Organization requires more sustainable financing to face today's complex and intersecting global health challenges.

The WHO Foundation was created in 2021. In 2022, Member States formed a Working Group on Sustainable Financing that set the stage for historic decisions, including a significant increase to assessed contributions and the introduction of an Investment Round to drive and sustain political commitment.

The first-ever WHO Investment Round aims to secure predictable financing for the Fourteenth WHO Fourteenth General Programme of Work (GPW14), which runs from 2025 to 2028. The Investment Round includes several key milestones which culminated in a pledging event and summit at the end of 2024. Its objective is to raise US$7.1 billion over four years, which is the GPW14 budget shortfall of US$ 11.1 billion after assessed contributions.

Read more: Investing in a transformed WHO


Nurse Julia Paredes travels on horseback to remote villages to provide preventive care and measles vaccines to indigenous communities in Chihuahua state, Mexico, 2024. Julia would like to be remembered with a vaccine thermos in the streets, talking to people and telling them that vaccines saves lives. Photo by WHO/Felix Marquez

WHO thanks all Member States and other contributors, with special appreciation for those who provide fully flexible contributions to maintain a strong, independent WHO.