BACK	UNITED NATIONS: WHO Needs Fixing

A two-day seminar on ''Global Health Cooperation at a Crossroads-- and the Need for a Far-reaching Public Debate,'' concluded that the world's premier U.N. body dealing with human health must first cure its own ills.

WHO has proved unequal to meet the growing new challenges in global health, said Sheila Coronel of the Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism. ''The media should hold national and global health institutions publicly acc ountable for what they do and what they don't,'' she told the gathering of journalists from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The seminar, sponsored by the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation of Sweden and Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, hagreed on the need for a radical restructuring of WHO just months ahead of elections for a new director-general of the health agency in January and WHO's 50th anniversary next May.

''The media should be the watchdog of national, regional and international i nstitutions dealing with health issues because most of them are neither transpa rent nor accountable,'' Coronel added.

She said newspapers, magazines and news agencies should also take on the functions of alerting policy makers on the impact of government cutbacks on health , particularly at a time when the WHO itself has failed to deliver on what it promised: ''Health for All''.

IPS Director-General Roberto Savio said that media concerns themselves were undergoing a metamorphosis, particularly with the advent of the information superhighway, the Internet.

The message about the global health crisis, he said, should also be conveyed through the Internet as radio, television and newspapers continue to face intense competition in a world where fast-moving information technology changes between two editions of the same newspaper.

One of the major decisions of the Rome meeting was to set up a Health and Media Network (HAM.NET), along with a Home Page aimed at exchanging information a mong journalists and also between non- governmental organisations (NGOs) and the media.

The proposed new network will help improve access to information on public health issues and link up journalists with NGOs, parliamentarians, and professional medical organisations.

Evelyn Wong of the Penang-based Third World Network, which publishes the monthly magazine Resurgent, said that WHO's failures were caused mostly by mismanagem ent and inept leadership.

''We would like to see a new WHO with a vision and a commitment for the new millennium,'' she said. ''That is why the election of a new director-general in January is so important to Third World nations,'' she added.

Wong pointed out that WHO's failings had prompted other U.N. bodies to hijack its mandate. The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) had taken the leader ship role in reproductive health; the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) in child he alth and breast feeding; and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in occupational health, she said.

Wong also predicted that human rights in the health field is expected to be taken over by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. ''So, what is left for WHO?,'' she asked.

The World Bank, meanwhile, has emerged as the single, largest aid agency setting strategies in health, nutrition and population (HNP). Last year, the Bank funded 154 active and 94 completed HNP projects at a cost of 13.5 billion dollars.

In an editorial comment in September, the UK-based medical publication, the Lancet, said that many people inside and outside WHO see the impending chan ge of leader as an opportunity to renew their commitment to ''an organisation t hat has lost much respect and authority in recent years.''

''With such diverse multilateral involvement, there has never been a more im portant moment for strong moral and technical leadership in world health,'' the Lancet said.

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) said earlier that the world has changed since t he WHO was founded nearly 50 years ago, and the pressure on WHO to change in re sponse has never been greater.

The BMJ said that WHO had failed to meet its challenges primarily because of its ''narrow, top down, service-oriented approach to health and its centralise d, hierarchical bureaucracy.''

''Much of this can be blamed on WHO's lack of leadership and inadequate comm itment from member states,'' the magazine noted. ''In trying to please all its political constituents, WHO has spread itself too thin and lost its direction.' '

Last year, following a consultation by a group of health experts, NGOs and former U.N. officials, the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation released a study that spelled out in detail the weaknesses of the WHO and the need for reform. The study recognised the accomplishments of WHO during the last five decades , including the eradication of small pox and the organisations's successes in global health policy, epidemiological information, health care standards and medical ethics.

''Over the last decade, however, WHO also has been openly criticised and does not seem to have the necessary preparedness for the 21st century with its new challenges,'' the survey said.

It added that the question of reform is largely a question of political will among the 190 member states of the WHO.

A meeting of the World Health Assembly, (the WHO's governing body) in January 1998, provides ''an extremely important opportunity to launch a su bstantive reform plan,'' the study said, and ''that opportunity must not be wasted.'' (END/IPS/td/mk/97)