Countries must pay more towards WHO: Indonesian candidate

The World Health Organization should focus on reprioritising its spending rather than chasing replacement funding, said Indonesia's Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin. 

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JAKARTA: Indonesia's health minister, who is vying for the World Health Organization's top job, said on Monday (Nov 2) that he was in favour of countries paying higher mandatory contributions to offset the slash to its budget from the US withdrawal. 

Budi Gunadi Sadikin told AFP the UN's health agency should focus on reprioritising its spending rather than chasing replacement funding - allocating bigger amounts for fewer projects.

"The priority is to review the functions (of the WHO), get the agreement of the countries and then ... we look for the (new) money," said the minister, who is one of seven candidates for the post of WHO director-general.

The first place to look for new funding would be from within, he said. 

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"Every country says the WHO needs to be sustainable. You cannot be sustainable if your membership contribution is only 20 per cent or 30 per cent (of the total budget)", Budi said.

"If you want to be sustainable, then at least the regular funding ... should be more than 50 per cent."

Member countries make mandatory payments called "assessed contributions" to the WHO, which are calculated every two years based on income and population size.

The rest of the budget - the bulk - comes from voluntary contributions from governments and donors.

Budi insisted that raising the threshold to 50 per cent would not be too onerous for countries, even at a time of global financial strain.

"I've seen the numbers ... You're not talking about billions of even a hundred million. It's not a big number," he said.

Divided by the body's 100 plus member countries, it would amount to tens of thousands of US dollars each.

"BRING THEM BACK"

Budi said the United States' official departure from the WHO in January was "not a total disaster" for the organisation, which was left with a similar budget to before the COVID-19 pandemic.

But he warned that any country not a member of the agency "will be at a disadvantage" in the event of a global health emergency.

"It is very clear that we need to bring them back," the minister said, adding that he would start talking to Washington "right away" if elected.

"Diplomacy, I believe, is the best weapon. If countries fight, I think the best thing to do is not sending missiles or sending arms."

Budi said he would also push for WHO member states to adopt a global pandemic treaty along with a fund to back it up.

The goal would be to ensure "everybody has the same right to access" to vaccines, treatments and diagnostics if a new worldwide pandemic strikes.

That would avoid a situation in which "some country can stock six times the population (worth) of vaccine while the other country cannot get the vaccine because it's already bought by some rich country," Budi said.

He said the WHO was "not ready" for a new global outbreak, nor doing enough to deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo's deadliest Ebola epidemic in history.

"The problem with this type of outbreak, if it happens specifically in a low-income country, the attention is not as big as like with COVID-19, where it also hit the high income" countries, he argued.

"We should be ... putting more money ... to address the issue for our African friends," he said.

In January, WHO's 34-member Executive Board will nominate up to three candidates to be submitted to the World Health Assembly of member states, which will choose its next head in May 2027.

Budi is running against candidates from Botswana, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Spain and China.

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