The path to a resilient and future-proof WHO

A Letter from Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Patron of the World Health Summit 2026

Together with my fellow patron, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, I am honoured to welcome you to the 2026 World Health Summit.

The theme of this year’s Summit, “From crisis to resilience” sums up perfectly the past 18 months in global health. Last year, official development assistance for health fell by around 40% in a single year. This unprecedented and precipitous drop caused severe disruption to health systems and the services on which millions of people depended. It meant health facilities closing, health workers losing their jobs or going unpaid, shortages of medicines and vaccines, and more. A study in The Lancet estimated that the cuts could lead to almost 23 million excess deaths in low- and middle-income countries.

Although the sudden and unplanned funding cuts were a crisis for many countries, they are also an opportunity to leave behind the era of aid dependency and transition to health sovereignty, based on domestic resources. This is the vision of the Accra Reset, which WHO supports, and it is the direction in which the global health architecture must now move.

WHO’s first priority has been to help countries protect essential health services while managing this shock. We have supported governments to develop essential health benefit packages, expand public health insurance, strengthen local production and introduce or increase health taxes that both reduce consumption of health-harming products and generate revenue for health. Many countries have made progress. Ghana, Namibia, Nigeria, the Philippines and others have taken practical steps to increase revenues and domestic health spending.

Although our primary concern is the countries we serve, WHO was also affected by the funding shock. We reduced our budget, restructured the Organization, and cut costs. The impact was mitigated by financial reforms of the past nine years, especially our Member States' historic decision to more than double assessed contributions from 20% of the base budget to 50%. WHO has stabilized and is moving forward as a leaner, more focused and resilient organization, centred on its core mandate and support to countries.

I have always believed the biggest risk to WHO is not losing funding, but losing our integrity. That is the choice WHO has faced. We chose to protect our integrity, side with science, and manage the financial consequences. In my final year as Director-General, I am focused on making WHO more resilient, independent and future-proof by continuing the work on sustainable financing and a focus on its core mandate.

The lessons WHO has learned are relevant far beyond our organization. The challenge facing every country and institution represented at this Summit is how to build systems that can absorb shocks, adapt and continue delivering results for the people we all serve.

Resilience is not luck. It is a choice we made, and one we must keep making.