Critics complain about the major role the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plays in funding WHO, but who else can the agency turn to?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – which still stands strong despite its two co-founders splitting up after 27 years of marriage – said last month it was “not right” for the charity to take on such a big role in funding the World Health Organization (WHO).
Over the years, the billionaire philanthropists have become the WHO’s second biggest donor, making the health agency heavily dependent on their support to keep functioning.
Global health experts say that while this money is welcome, it gives the Gates an outsized influence and underscores the chronic funding problem WHO faces even as it contends with more and more health crises.
“WHO has an annual budget less than the size of a single large teaching hospital in the United States and one-quarter of the budget of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” said Lawrence Gostin, Director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law.
“Yet it has a huge global health responsibility, including responding to major public health emergencies such as COVID-19, Mpox (formerly monkeypox), Ebola, and polio,” he told Euronews Next.