73rd World Health Assembly

Recently the 73rd World Health Assembly will be conducted virtually due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Assembly is the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, attended by representatives of the United Nation’s 194 member states.

World Health Assembly

• It is the world’s highest health policy-setting body under the World Health Organisation.
• It is composed of health ministers from member states.
• It is attended by delegations from all WHO Member States and focuses on a specific health agenda prepared by the Executive Board.

Functions

• To determine the policies of the Organization
• Appoint the Director-General
• Supervise financial policies
• Review and approve the proposed programme budget

key points

• A draft proposal has been introduced in the ‘World Health Assembly’ for a fair investigation on issues related to COVID-19.
• India has supported a coalition of 62 countries led by the European Union and Australia to investigate COVID-19 in the ‘World Health Assembly’.
• These 62 countries include Bangladesh, Canada, Russia, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, Britain and Japan.
• In this draft proposal, ‘World Health Organization’ and ‘World Organization for Animal Health-OIE’ jointly identify the sources of COVID-19, issues like how humans came into contact with COVID-19. Has been referred to scientific investigation.
• The draft proposal states that all countries share accurate and sufficiently detailed public health information related to COVID-19 with the World Health Organization.
• India, at the G-20 summit in March 2020 itself, mentioned the requirements of reform, transparency and accountability at the ‘World Health Organization’.
• A few days ago the US questioned the role of the World Health Organization in dealing with the COVID-19 epidemic.
• At the same time, the US also stopped funding to WHO.

UPSC