COVID-19: where does the WHO go from here?

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, three experts in global health explain why COVID-19 has been a moment of reckoning for the World Health Organization (WHO), and where it goes from here. And to mark one year since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, we hear from Conversation editors around the world on the situation where they live right now.

The WHO had a torrid 2020. Although it declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern in late January, much of the world was slow to react. And it wasn’t until March 11, when the WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described it as a pandemic, that countries began to take the virus seriously and began locking down. 

In this episode, we talk to three experts about where the WHO goes from here. Peter Gluckman, former scientific advisor to the prime minister of New Zealand and Director of Koi Tū, the Center for Informed Futures at the University of Auckland, says world leaders should use this moment as a catalyst for reform. Ana Amaya, Assistant Professor at Pace University and an Associate Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration studies, tells us the current global health system is no longer acceptable to many developing countries in the global south. And Andrew Lakoff, Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, explains what process of inquiry the WHO went through after the H1N1 and Ebola epidemics, and why apportioning responsibility for failures is crucial in planning for the future.

The Conversation Weekly is hosted by Gemma Ware and Dan Merino. The show is co-produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Visit The Conversation for full credits. If you'd like to sign up for The Conversation's free daily newsletter, please subscribe here.

Further reading

You can read a series of articles on The Conversation marking the one-year anniversary of WHO declaring COVID-19 a pandemic here. Meanwhile, here are some of the articles we've mentioned in this episode, plus a few more:

• WHO reform: a call for an early-warning protocol for infectious diseases, by Peter Gluckman, University of Auckland and Andrew Gillespie, University of Waikato
• Why the WHO, often under fire, has a tough balance to strike in its efforts to address health emergencies, by Andrew Lakoff, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
• A year of COVID-19 lockdown is putting kids at risk of allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, by Byram W. Bridle, University of Guelph
• COVID-19 treatments: what are the most promising leads, by Dominique Costagliola, Inserm (in French)
• After a year of pain, here’s how the COVID-19 pandemic could play out in 2021 and beyond, by Michael Toole, Burnet Institute
• Coronavirus one year on: two countries that got it right, and three that got it wrong, by Darren Lilleker, Bournemouth University
• One year of the pandemic and we continue to look for answers, by Ildefonso Hernández Aguado and Blanca Lumbreras Lacarra, Universidad Miguel Hernández (in Spanish)