Professor Jennifer Prah Ruger writes in @FT “Although the @WHO suffers from a lack of independence, it should be fixed, rather than scrapped...” & goes on to recommend 5 areas to focus on ft.com/content/df7289…
The call for reform is one that has been made before (see attached from typing “reform WHO Ebola into Google) with some success looking at WHO AFRO today & there are always opportunities to improve & strengthen such a sprawling, often unwieldy organisation. But isn’t WHO caught.. 
...in a catch 22 situation? It requires cooperation (& funding) & one may argue derives its powers, such as they are from member states & also has to provide independent assessment of those states’ actions & in actions relating to global health? How can that circle be squared?
What sort of organisation could play that central coordinating role at global level more effectively? A private public partnership like the Global Fund would still face questions of accountability & where it derived its authority & thus its influence from...
2 areas the @FT piece identified for reform- increased transparency in decision making & bigger more sustainable financing via multi-year agreements should be doable, although given patchiness of current contributions it appears some like keeping WHO on tight leash they can yank
But then there’s recommendation to restore its scientific credibility by uncoupling the science from the politics. Ideal, but is it feasible & doable? Look at COVID. Also election of WHO DGs & the criticisms & support they receive are all influenced I’d argue, by geopolitics...
It closes with “Gro Harlem Brundtland, often seen as the WHO’s best (DG), led the successful 2003 containment of Sars. Stopping (it) in its tracks required science-based decisions that always placed public health first..” Yet Dr Brundtland received her share of criticism too...
... for not bringing enough pressure to bear" on developed countries to provide antiretroviral medications to HIV-positive Africans because it is "too cozy with the pharmaceutical industry," khn.org/morning-breako…
So is it perhaps time that we accepted with serenity, the things that we cannot change about @WHO without losing much that is useful; embark with courage on changing the many things that can improve its role & functions & look carefully again at the difference between the two?
Sometimes, I remember to try & share my thoughts beyond Twitter, to reach those not on here & also for the formal record. This time it worked. An edited version of this thread is in the Letters section of the @FT today ft.com/content/2de6f9…
