Cash-strapped UN agency spends big on travel

The World Health Organization routinely spends about $200 million a year on travel — far more than what it doles out to fight some of the biggest problems in public health including AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

As the cash-strapped UN health agency pleads for more money to fund its responses to health crises worldwide, it has also been struggling to get its own travel costs under control. Despite introducing new rules to try to curb its expansive travel budget, senior officials have complained internally that UN staffers are breaking the rules by booking perks like business class airplane tickets and rooms in five-star hotels.

Last year, WHO spent about $71 million on AIDS and hepatitis. On malaria, it spent $61 million. And to slow tuberculosis, WHO invested $59 million. Still, some health programs do get exceptional funding — the agency spends about $450 million trying to wipe out polio every year.

On a recent trip to Guinea, where WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan praised health workers in West Africa for triumphing over Ebola, Chan stayed in the biggest presidential suite at the Palm Camayenne hotel in Conakry. The suite has an advertised price of 900 euros ($1,008) a night. The agency said that Chan’s overnight stay in Guinea cost the same as all other WHO travellers — 212 euros — but declined to say who picked up the tab, noting only that her hotels are sometimes paid for by the host country.

But some say that sends the wrong message to the rest of the agency’s 7,000 staffers.

“We don’t trust people to do the right thing when it comes to travel,” said Nick Jeffreys, WHO’s director of finance, during an in-house seminar on accountability in September 2015.

Despite WHO’s numerous travel regulations, Jeffreys said staffers “can sometimes manipulate a little bit their travel.” He said the agency couldn’t be sure they were always booking the cheapest ticket or that the travel was even warranted.

“People don’t always know what the right thing to do is,” he said.

Ian Smith, executive director of Chan’s office, said the chair of WHO’s audit committee said the agency often did little to stop misbehaviour.

“We, as an organization, sometimes function as if rules are there to be broken and that exceptions are the rule rather than the norm,” Smith said.

Earlier that year, a memorandum was sent to Chan and other top leaders with the subject, “ACTIONS TO CONTAIN TRAVEL COSTS” in allcaps. The memo reported that compliance with rules that travel be booked in advance was “very low” and also pointed out WHO was under pressure from member countries to save money.

Travel would always be necessary, the memo said, but “as an organization we must demonstrate that we are serious about managing this appropriately.”

In a statement to the AP, the UN health agency said “the nature of WHO’s work often requires WHO staff to travel” and said costs had been reduced 14 per cent last year compared to the previous year — although that year’s total was exceptionally high due to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.