Bangkok Post

WHO spends more on travel than combating disease

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LONDON: The World Health Organisati­on (WHO) routinely spends about US$200 million a year on travel — far more than what it doles out to fight some of the biggest problems in public health, according to internal documents obtained by the Associated Press (AP).

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 such asbusiness class airplane tickets and rooms in five-star hotels.

Last year, the WHO spent about $71 million on Aids and hepatitis. On malaria, it spent $61 million. And to slow tuberculos­is, the WHO invested $59 million. Still, some health programmes 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 Margaret Chan praised health workers in West Africa for triumphing over Ebola, she stayed in the biggest presidenti­al suite at the Palm Camayenne hotel in Conakry. The suite has an advertised price of €900 (almost 35,000 baht) a night. The agency said Dr Chan’s overnight stay in Guinea cost the same as all other WHO travellers — €212 — 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 — a video of which was obtained by the AP.

Despite the WHO’s numerous travel regulation­s, Mr 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 Dr Chan’s office, said the chair of the WHO’s audit committee said the agency often did little to stop misbehavio­ur.

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

Earlier that year, a memorandum was sent to Dr Chan and other top leaders with the subject, “Actions To Contain Travel Costs” in all-caps. The memo reported that compliance with rules that travel be booked in advance was “very low” and also pointed out that WHO was under pressure from its member countries to save money.

Travel would always be necessary, the memo said, but “as an organisati­on 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% last year compared to the previous year — although that year’s total was exceptiona­lly high due to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

But staffers are still openly ignoring the rules. An internal analysis in March, obtained by the AP, found that only two of seven department­s at WHO’s Geneva headquarte­rs met their targets, and concluded the compliance rate for booking travel in advance was between 28% and 59%.

Since 2013, the WHO has paid out $803 million for travel. Its $2-billion annual budget is drawn from the taxpayerfu­nded contributi­ons of its 194 member countries, with the United States the largest contributo­r.

After he was elected, US President Donald Trump tweeted: “The UN has such great potential,” but had become “just a club for people to get together, talk, and have a good time. So sad!”

Some health experts said while the WHO’s travel costs look out of place when compared to some of its disease budgets, that doesn’t necessaril­y mean that travel expenses are inflated.

Michael Osterholm, an infectious

diseases expert at the University of Minnesota, has frequently been flown to WHO meetings — in economy — on the agency’s dime. “This may just speak to how misplaced internatio­nal priorities are, that WHO is getting so little for these disease programmes,” he said.

During the Ebola disaster in West Africa, the WHO’s travel costs spiked to $234 million. Although experts say on-the-ground help was critical, some question whether the agency couldn’t have shaved costs so that more funds went to West Africa , where the three stricken countries couldn’t even afford basics such as protective boots, gloves and soap for endangered medical workers or body bags for the thousands of people who died.

Bruce Aylward, who directed the WHO’s outbreak response, racked up nearly $400,000 in travel expenses during the Ebola crisis, sometimes flying by helicopter to visit clinics instead of travelling by jeep over muddy roads, according to internal trip reports he filed.

Dr Chan spent more than $370,000 in travel that year, as documented in a confidenti­al 25-page analysis of WHO expenses that identified the agency’s top 50 spenders. Dr Aylward and Dr Chan were first and second on that list. Three sources who asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs said Dr Chan often flew first class.

The WHO said the travel policy, until February, “included the possibilit­y for the [director-general] to fly first class”. It said Dr Chan flew business class and requested the policy be changed to eliminate the firstclass option. It also said Dr Chan “strictly abides” by the agency’s travel policies.

“There’s a huge inequality between the people at the top who are getting helicopter­s and business class and everyone else who just has to make do,” said Sophie Harman, an expert in global health politics at Queen Mary University in London.

Other internatio­nal aid agencies, including Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), explicitly forbid staff from travelling in business class. Even the charity’s president flies economy class, a spokeswoma­n said. With a staff of about 37,000 aid workers versus the WHO’s 7,000 staffers, MSF spends about $43 million on travel a year.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention would not provide its travel costs but said staffers are not allowed to fly business class unless they have a medical condition that warrants it. The UN children’s agency, Unicef, which has about 13,000 staffers, said it spent $140 million on global travel in 2016.

“When you spend the kind of money WHO is spending on travel, you have to be able to justify it,” said Ashish Jha, director of the Global Health Institute at Harvard University. “I can’t think of any justificat­ion for ever flying first class.”

Dr Jha warned that WHO’s travel spending could have significan­t consequenc­es for fundraisin­g. Several weeks ago, the WHO asked for about $100 million to save people in Somalia from an ongoing drought. In April, it requested $126 million to stop the humanitari­an catastroph­e in Yemen. “If WHO is not being as lean as possible, it’s going to be hard to remain credible when they make their next funding appeal,” Dr Jha said.

 ?? AP ?? World Health Organisati­on (WHO) chief Margaret Chan visits the Rungis internatio­nal market to mark the World Health Day in Rungis, outside Paris on April 7, 2015. The WHO routinely spends about US$200 million a year on travel, far more than what it...
AP World Health Organisati­on (WHO) chief Margaret Chan visits the Rungis internatio­nal market to mark the World Health Day in Rungis, outside Paris on April 7, 2015. The WHO routinely spends about US$200 million a year on travel, far more than what it...

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