Moscow meeting marks “beginning of a different WHO,” says director general

The World Health Organization’s global forum on meeting the challenge of non-communicable disease, held in Moscow this week, marks “the beginning of a different WHO,” said Margaret Chan, its director general, in closing the meeting.

WHO, she said, is “not an inclusive organisation.” It belongs to the member organisations, and if you are not a government you can’t have a seat at the table. WHO is “not a good way to hear all the voices.”

Yet the meeting made it clear that non-communicable diseases can be tackled only by including all parties, including civil organisations, patients’ organisations, professional groups, and the private sector. We need, said Dr Chan, “a social movement” and institutions that can use a “whole of government and whole of society approach.”

The Moscow meeting included non-governmental organisations, patients’ organisations, the private sector, professional organisations, and other groups. It was held the day before the first global ministerial conference on healthy lifestyles and control of non-communicable disease, and the conclusions of the meeting are being fed into the ministerial conference, which is itself part of the build up to the United Nations high level meeting on non-communicable diseases in New York in September. The first meeting was a device for hearing different voices, and it was the success of the meeting that excited Dr Chan.

It was, she said, “a groundbreaking meeting for WHO,” and she told the delegates, “You are making history.” Before the meeting, she confessed, “I was worried that you were going to fight.” She even broke into song in her closing speech.

She sang “Getting to Know You” from the musical The King and I in response to a delegate who warned against letting the private sector become too involved. “Know your friends, enemies, and spies,” said Dr Chan, who described how member states divide into those who love the private sector, those who don’t like it, and those, the largest group, who are in the middle. Everybody, she said, has a conflict of interest, including the WHO secretariat, but it doesn’t mean you can’t speak. All conflicts of interest must be declared, but she made it very clear that the tobacco industry must always be excluded.

Members of the private sector asked how they could build trust, and Dr Chan replied that it was “easy”: “walk your talk” and “don’t over-commit and underperform.”

Although she welcomed the forum and the chance to hear different voices, Dr Chan made it clear that governments will continue to be the decision makers. But they should make their decisions with full knowledge of what other sectors thought.