Working in partnership with World Health Organisation (WHO) – New Institutional Strategy (2008-2013) - Additional Information

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WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.

Five critical challenges face the world at the beginning of the 21st century:

The rapid growth of non-communicable conditions in the disease profiles of developing countries
The still unchecked HIV/AIDS pandemic
The possibility of a successor to the influenza pandemic of 1918
The persistence in many countries and many population subgroups of high but preventable levels of mortality and disability from: o malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, and pneumonia o micronutrient malnutrition and, o childbirth, for both mothers and infants
The threat to health from climate change and other environmental factors

WHO is key to responding to all of these challenges as the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is also a key development partner and central to delivering the Millennium Development Goals.

The UK is a key supporter of WHO and its work, it’s also WHO’s second largest funder to, giving some $365m in the two years 2006-2007. This funding is part of our investment to protect and improve the health of the UK population and in tackling global poverty and improving health of poor people.

The WHO Institutional Strategy will be a joint UK strategy led by the Department of Health, England, the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and is being developed in consultation with other departments with an interest in WHO and devolved administrations.

The Institutional Strategy sets out the rationale and objectives for UK support to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the way we can work together and with others more effectively. The strategy also serves as an accountability framework for our financial support. It is entirely consistent with WHO’s medium term strategic plan (MTSP), from which indicators to measure progress in the institutional strategy will be taken. It will also run over the same period of time, 2008 to 2013.

The Institutional Strategy looks across WHO’s work as described by the three broad areas in WHO’s Eleventh Global Programme of Work:

Fundamental needs: health development and health security
Strategic issues: strengthening health systems and gathering and analysing the evidence needed to set priorities and measure progress
Operations: fostering partnership and collaboration, strong governance and ensuring WHO is a learning organisation.

Because the UK’s institutional strategies are predominantly concerned with the ability and effectiveness of the organisation to meet its objectives, this Institutional Strategy has greatest focus on the last of these areas.

As part of our consultation process we’re inviting comments and views from people and organisations with an interest in WHO and global health issues. Your views and ideas will be very helpful to us in producing a final version. Specific questions are set out below:

1. Do you agree that the UK should support WHO across the three broad areas outlined above?

2. How can the UK best work with WHO to reduce poverty and deliver the MDGs?

3. How should WHO work at the country level alongside other UN and international actors?

4. How can we work with WHO to improve its internal efficiency, results based management and reporting?

5. How can we best measure and monitor progress with the IS and WHO’s programme of work?

Please send views on these questions, or indeed any other points or comments you wish to make to: mailto:WHOIS2008@dfid.gov.uk

The consultation will run until 1 August 2008. We are very grateful for your comments, however we cannot provide a response to all of them.