• by IPS Correspondents (stockholm)
• Saturday, December 24, 1994
• Inter Press Service

STOCKHOLM, Dic 24 (IPS) - Sweden hit out this week at persistent "bureaucracy and inefficiency" in the World Health Organisation (WHO) by halving its annual grant to the Geneva-based association.

Sweden is the second biggest donor to WHO after the United States and the announcement followed what Swedish officials termed the organisation's failure to respond to growing concern over its operations.

The organisation will now receive only 6.6 million dollars from Sweden next year instead of the designated 13.2 million.

Foreign Aid Minister Pierre Schori, said Sweden and other WHO member countries had repeatedly demanded that the association be reformed and made more efficient. WHO's executive board has also ordered improvements.

Schori said: "Despite this, nothing has happened. We must therefore now show that we are serious. We want this decision to contribute to the initiation of reforms within the WHO so the organisation can carry out its important role in international public health."

The Swedish decision, which follows moves by the Finnish and Danish governments to scale down support, is a major financial blow to the WHO, which relies on international grants to finance its vaccination programmes and preventive measures against diseases like Acquired Immune Deficiency (AIDS), tuberculosis and malaria.

Sweden, along with several other countries, has been concerned about management and operational problems since September 1993.

Martina Smedberg, a foreign ministry official, said WHO was a "rather losed" organisation and had failed to respond to repeated requests for greater dialogue.

Smedberg added that the entire structure of the WHO's organisation was unclear, leading to inefficiency. Management needed to be made "more transparent and more relevant".

"They (the WHO) have not shown a strong enough will to reform the organisation, nor has there been enough dialogue with member countries," Smedberg said.

Specifically, she said Sweden was unhappy about the chain of communication within the WHO. Offices in individual countries "did too little" and frequently failed to act on information from Geneva.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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