The Executive Board of the World Health Organisation is meeting next week. It’s going to be an important meeting and, thanks to the wonder of the internet, you can watch it live from tomorrow. I was invited by the Peoples Health Movement to write a commentary on two documents that will be presented to the Board by the head of WHO’s Secretariat, Dr Tedros. The first is EB148/27: Update on the financing and implementation of the Programme budget 2020–2021, which I wrote about yesterday. The second, and the subject of this blogpost, is EB148/25: Draft Proposed programme budget 2022–2023: Building forward better. It’s an astonishing document, but at 117 pages perhaps one that few people will read. So I’ll try to summarise it as best as I ca… Oh, you just want to know how much the budget is going to be? Sigh, ok: US$6.1bn – just 5% more than the approved budget for 2020-21.
If you want to read all of PHM’s Comments on the various topics under discussion at EB148, you can access them at PHM’s WHO Tracker, coordinated by David Legge. It’s a vital resource and provides a critical commentary on all the major global health challenges facing the word today.