Global health architecture reform or restoration?
In a new opinion piece published in PLOS Global Health, authors Kantiana ID, Alpeza F, Bandara S, Cook
AR, and Rahman-Shepherd A discuss the WHO-led global health architecture reform process.
The way the WHO-hosted process on reforming the global health architecture is designed will largely determine its ability to deliver meaningful change.
As the Task Force is being set up, the selection of representatives must be transparent; robust safeguards should be put in place to manage vested interests and institutional self-preservation; and the scope of the process must extend beyond mapping the current landscape and improving coordination.
Otherwise, there is a risk that this process becomes yet another resource-intensive exercise to maintain the status quo, bringing together the same actors, guided by the same principles, and ultimately arriving at the same institutional structures.