The World Health Organization (WHO) intends to reduce the number of employees and the scale of their work when seeing its budget diminished by just one fifth due to the impact of the US financing cuts, according to an internal memorandum to which the Reuters agency has had access. The US administration retired from the WHO Covid-19 pandemia and other international health crises. The US is, by far, the greatest financial support of the UN Health Agency, since it contributed around 18 % of its total financing. “The announcement of the United States, combined with recent reductions in official development assistance by some countries to finance a greater expense in defense, has made our situation much more critical”, is stated in the WHO memo WHO, Tedros Adhanom ghebreyesus. The US withdrawal has aggravated a financing crisis due to the reduction of developing spending by the Member States. Before a deficit of almost 600 million dollars this year, WHO has proposed to reduce its budget by 2026-27 by 21 %, from 5.3 billion dollars to 4.2 billion dollars, according to the memorandum. On February, the WHO Executive Council had initially reduced the budget proposed by 2026-27 of 5.3 billion dollars to 4.9 billion dollars, according to the note. “Despite our greatest efforts, we have reached the point where we have no other option than to reduce the scale of our work and our workforce,” says the memorandum. The WHO will reduce jobs at the levels of higher leadership at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, although all levels and regions will be affected, adds the memorandum. The organization will decide how to prioritize its work and resources at the end of April. WHO documents show that the UN agency has more than a quarter of its 9,473 employees in Geneva. An internal memorandum of March 10, which also had Reuters access, indicates that WHO has begun to set priorities and it is a one -year limit in staff contracts. It also points out that staff are working to ensure additional financing from countries, private donors and philanthropists. (Tagstotranslate) WHO (T) Health
