WHO faces restructuring over sluggish response to Covid-19
The World Health Organization faces potential shake-up due to its slow response to Covid-19 pandemic and how to handle future outbreaks in the future.
Health ministers said on Monday that they would study recommendations made by independent experts to strengthen the power of the WHO and individual countries to contain new illnesses, reported Reuters.
The experts found crucial failures in the global response in early 2020. They argued that the WHO should be given the power to send investigators swiftly to chase down new disease outbreaks and to publish their full findings as soon as possible.
Health ministers from WHO's 194 member states will also meet from 29 November to decide whether to launch negotiations on an international treaty aimed at boosting defences against any future pandemic.
WHO's emergencies director, Mike Ryan, welcomed the decisions, telling its annual ministerial assembly: "Right now the pathogens have the upper hand, they are emerging more frequently and often silently in a planet that is out of balance.
"We need to turn that very thing that has exposed us in this pandemic, our interconnectedness, we need to turn that into a strength," he said.