World Health Organization scales back work after funding cuts

By Jennifer Rigby

LONDON (Reuters) -The World Health Organization has reduced its absorption squad by fractional and volition person to standard backmost operations, its director-general said connected Wednesday, 4 months aft the United States announced it was leaving the bureau and cutting funding.

"To beryllium blunt, we cannot bash everything," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said astatine a fund committee gathering up of the body's yearly gathering adjacent week.

President Donald Trump said the U.S. was leaving the bureau connected the archetypal time of his instrumentality to bureau successful January.

Under U.S. law, a one-year announcement play is required earlier the country, the biggest fiscal backer of the WHO, tin leave, arsenic good arsenic the outgo of each fees. That wealth is outstanding.

Tedros said the assemblage and its subordinate states indispensable marque hard choices astir what to prioritise, fixed a projected 21% chopped successful the fund for 2026-2027 to $4.2 billion.

Even that reduced fund volition lone beryllium astir 60% funded, provided subordinate states hold to rise their mandatory fees astatine the gathering adjacent week, helium said.

The WHO has already announced ratio measures and hopes to prevention astir $165 cardinal this year.

It volition besides trim the fig of its departments to 34 from 76 and plans to chopped unit costs by 25%, Tedros said, though that did not mean 25% of jobs would beryllium cut.

"But let’s beryllium clear: reducing the standard of our workforce means reducing the standard and scope of our work," helium said, adding the organisation would adjacent immoderate offices successful high-income countries.

Tedros said the WHO has had discussions with different planetary wellness groups to sermon amended collaboration fixed the cuts.

The body's caller enactment squad of seven, including Tedros, is down from 14 people. The changes see moving main idiosyncratic Dr. Jeremy Farrar into a relation arsenic adjunct director-general for wellness promotion and illness prevention and control.

Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu volition go enforcement manager of the wellness emergencies programme, and Dr. Sylvie Briand volition beryllium main scientist.

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; editing by Barbara Lewis)