A pandemic exposes more than a virus.
It exposes the strength of institutions. It exposes the honesty of governments. It exposes the inequality of the world. It exposes whether global cooperation is real or only ceremonial. It exposes whether countries believe in science when fear rises, whether they share supplies when scarcity begins, and whether international organizations have the authority, funding and trust needed to act before catastrophe spreads.
COVID-19 did exactly that.
It showed that the world had experts, laboratories, warning systems, treaties, hospitals, pharmaceutical capacity and international organizations — yet still failed to prevent a local outbreak from becoming a global disaster. It showed that global health security cannot depend only on technical knowledge. It depends on political courage, transparency, financing, equity and obedience to shared rules.
At the centre of this debate stands the World Health Organization.
The WHO is often criticized. Some criticism is fair. Some is political. Some comes from genuine frustration with delay, bureaucracy and limited enforcement. Some comes from governments that prefer blaming Geneva to admitting their own failures. But after the pandemic experience, one fact is clear: the world does not need a weaker WHO. It needs a more credible, better-funded, more independent, more transparent and more enforceable WHO.
WHO reform remains urgent because the next pandemic will not wait for diplomatic comfort.
The WHO is blamed for failures it does not fully control
The WHO occupies a strange position in global politics. It is expected to protect the world, but it does not govern the world.
It can warn, coordinate, advise, collect data, declare emergencies, issue guidance and support countries. But it cannot force a sovereign government to report truthfully. It cannot compel a country to share samples instantly. It cannot enter territory without consent. It cannot manufacture vaccines at scale by itself. It cannot order lockdowns, reopen borders, redistribute national stockpiles or punish governments that conceal information.
This mismatch between expectation and authority is the core problem.
During COVID-19, many people expected the WHO to act like a global health government. But legally and politically, it is closer to a coordinating authority dependent on member states. Its strength depends on the honesty, funding and cooperation of those states.
That does not absolve the WHO. It means reform must be honest about where failure actually lies. If countries want the WHO to prevent pandemics, they must give it the authority, money and political backing required to do so. If they refuse, then criticizing the WHO after every crisis becomes a ritual of hypocrisy.
The pandemic agreement is historic, but unfinished
The most important post-COVID institutional development is the WHO Pandemic Agreement. The World Health Assembly adopted it on 20 May 2025 after more than three years of negotiations. WHO describes the agreement as a legally binding instrument designed to make the world safer and more equitable in preventing, preparing for and responding to future pandemics.
The agreement covers major areas such as disease surveillance, One Health, health-system strengthening, health and care workforce protection, research and development coordination, local production capacity, technology transfer, sustainable financing, public communication and international cooperation. It also proposes a Global Supply Chain and Logistics Network and a Coordinating Financial Mechanism.
This is important progress. But it is not the end of reform.
The most politically sensitive element — the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system, or PABS — still requires detailed negotiation through an annex. WHO states that the full agreement will be open for signature and ratification after that annex is adopted, and it will enter into force 30 days after 60 countries ratify it.
This means the world has adopted a framework, but the real test remains implementation.
The pandemic agreement must not become another elegant document that governments praise in peacetime and ignore in panic. Its value will depend on whether countries actually share pathogens and genetic information quickly, whether medical countermeasures are distributed fairly, whether financing is predictable, and whether low- and middle-income countries are treated as partners rather than passive recipients.
The International Health Regulations are stronger, but still limited
The second major reform is the amendment of the International Health Regulations, or IHR. The amended IHR entered into force on 19 September 2025. WHO says the regulations guide 196 States Parties, including all 194 WHO member states, on rights and obligations concerning public health risks. The amendments introduced a new alert level called a “pandemic emergency,” created National IHR Authorities to coordinate implementation, and added provisions on access to medical products and financing based on equity and solidarity.
This matters because the old pandemic warning system had a credibility problem. Countries needed clearer escalation signals. The new “pandemic emergency” category is meant to trigger stronger international collaboration when a health threat moves beyond a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and risks becoming, or has already become, a pandemic with serious societal disruption.
But here again, reform has limits.
WHO itself states that under the IHR it serves as the Secretariat and has no authority to compel countries to act. It also noted that 11 of the 196 IHR States Parties rejected the 2024 amendments, meaning previous IHR versions continue to apply to them unless those rejections are withdrawn.
This shows the fundamental tension. The world wants stronger pandemic rules, but many states remain protective of sovereignty. The result is a system that improves coordination but still struggles with enforcement.
Sovereignty cannot become a hiding place for outbreaks
No country wants foreign interference in its health system. That concern is understandable. Health policy involves domestic law, public trust, economics, culture and political legitimacy. During emergencies, governments must make difficult decisions about schools, borders, hospitals, workplaces, vaccination, surveillance and public spending.
But sovereignty cannot mean secrecy.
A pathogen suppressed in the name of national image can become a global emergency. Delayed reporting does not protect sovereignty. It endangers it. A country that hides an outbreak may briefly avoid embarrassment, but it risks economic shutdown, diplomatic isolation and domestic panic later.
The WHO must therefore be empowered to receive, verify and act on outbreak information from multiple sources, not only formal government notification. Digital signals, clinical networks, genomic surveillance, wastewater data, open-source intelligence, academic researchers and local health workers should all feed into a stronger early-warning system.
The principle should be clear: states remain sovereign over domestic health policy, but no state has the right to conceal a serious transnational biological risk.
The WHO’s biggest weakness is not only authority; it is money
A global health institution cannot function on unpredictable funding.
WHO member states approved a 20 percent increase in assessed contributions and endorsed the organization’s 2026–27 budget of US$4.2 billion in May 2025. WHO said this was the second such 20 percent increase and noted that insufficient predictable funding and overreliance on a small set of traditional donors had long been identified as major organizational challenges.
The same WHO release stated that assessed contributions represented only 16 percent of the approved programme budget in the 2020–2021 biennium, and that member states had agreed in 2022 to gradually raise assessed contributions to represent 50 percent of WHO’s core budget by the 2030–2031 cycle at the latest. It also said WHO’s originally approved 2026–27 programme budget was downsized 22 percent, from US$5.3 billion to US$4.2 billion, because of financial constraints.
This is not a technical accounting issue. It is a governance issue.
When an organization depends heavily on voluntary contributions, donors can influence priorities. Money may be tied to specific projects rather than flexible institutional capacity. Emergency response, surveillance, country offices and long-term preparedness may suffer because they are less attractive to donors than visible disease-specific campaigns.
A reformed WHO needs more predictable core funding. Otherwise, the world is asking it to behave like a fire brigade while funding it like a charity.
The US withdrawal deepens the crisis of trust and capacity
WHO reform is also urgent because global health has become politically polarized.
In January 2026, WHO said it regretted the United States’ notification of withdrawal, calling it a decision that makes both the United States and the world less safe. WHO also defended its pandemic response, saying it acted quickly, shared information rapidly and advised member states based on the best available evidence, while emphasizing that it did not recommend mask mandates, vaccine mandates or lockdowns because sovereign governments made those decisions themselves.
The US government presented the issue differently. A January 2026 HHS fact sheet said all US government funding to WHO had been terminated, US personnel and contractors assigned to WHO had been recalled, hundreds of engagements had been suspended or discontinued, and the US had ceased official participation in WHO-sponsored committees and governance structures. It also said US assessed contributions had averaged about US$111 million annually and voluntary contributions about US$570 million per year in recent years.
This disagreement reflects a deeper crisis. For some, the WHO is too weak and too dependent on states. For others, it is too powerful and insufficiently accountable. Both claims cannot be accepted uncritically, but both reveal the same reality: the WHO’s legitimacy is under stress.
A global health system cannot work if major powers withdraw when they disagree. Reform should make WHO more accountable, but withdrawal weakens collective preparedness. Viruses do not become less dangerous because one country chooses a separate path.
Accountability must apply to the WHO and to governments
The WHO must be accountable. It should be transparent about what it knew, when it knew it, how it assessed risk, how it communicated uncertainty and how it handled political pressure. Emergency declarations must be timely and credible. Guidance must explain evidence clearly. Mistakes must be admitted. Internal bureaucracy must be reduced. Regional offices and headquarters must coordinate better.
But accountability cannot stop at Geneva.
Governments also failed during COVID. Some delayed action. Some ignored warnings. Some underfunded public health for years before the crisis. Some politicized masks and vaccines. Some hid data. Some failed elderly populations. Some allowed misinformation to spread. Some hoarded supplies. Some imposed restrictions without protecting poor workers. Some blamed foreigners instead of fixing domestic systems.
The world must resist the temptation to make WHO the sole scapegoat. The pandemic was not only an institutional failure. It was a political failure by states.
True reform must therefore create two-way accountability: WHO must answer to member states and people, but member states must also answer for their obligations to the global community.
Equity must move from slogan to operating rule
The pandemic’s moral failure was not only the number of deaths. It was the inequality of protection.
The world developed vaccines at extraordinary speed. But access was deeply unequal. Rich countries moved first. Poor countries waited. Health workers in vulnerable states remained exposed while booster debates began elsewhere. Oxygen shortages, testing gaps and medicine scarcity showed that global health was still organized around purchasing power.
This is why WHO reform must place equity at the centre.
Equity cannot mean vague sympathy after rich countries have secured their own supplies. It must mean advance rules for distribution, regional manufacturing, technology transfer, transparent pricing, pooled procurement, stockpile sharing and financing for countries that cannot compete in crisis markets.
The pandemic agreement’s emphasis on local production capacity, technology transfer, supply-chain coordination and a benefit-sharing system is therefore not ideological. It is practical. A world where most countries wait for charity is not safe. It is unstable.
Health security for one country depends on health security for others.
The WHO must become faster without becoming reckless
A common criticism of international organizations is that they are slow. The criticism has force. Multilateral procedures can be cautious, diplomatic and bureaucratic. During a fast-moving outbreak, delay is dangerous.
WHO reform must therefore focus on speed.
But speed must not mean panic. Public health decisions must be evidence-based. Early warnings often involve uncertainty. Declaring too late can be catastrophic. Declaring too early can damage credibility if the threat does not materialize. The WHO must operate in this difficult space between caution and urgency.
The solution is not to demand perfect certainty before action. The solution is to communicate uncertainty honestly.
A reformed WHO should use clearer risk categories, publish the reasoning behind major decisions, explain what is known and unknown, and update guidance quickly as evidence changes. Public trust suffers when guidance shifts without explanation. It improves when institutions admit uncertainty and show their reasoning.
In a pandemic, clarity is not a luxury. It is a life-saving tool.
Country capacity is the real foundation of global reform
No global treaty can compensate for weak national health systems.
If a country lacks laboratories, trained epidemiologists, genomic sequencing, hospital capacity, oxygen systems, emergency logistics, primary care, community health workers and public trust, it will struggle even under the best international framework.
The WHO can support and coordinate. But national and local systems detect and contain outbreaks.
This is why reform must prioritize country capacity, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Surveillance should not be a donor project that disappears after funding ends. It should be permanent public infrastructure. Laboratories should not function only during crises. They should be embedded in routine health systems. Community health workers should not be celebrated only during emergencies. They should be paid, trained and protected.
The WHO’s 2026 emergency appeal shows the scale of fragility. WHO says severe funding constraints across the humanitarian system have disrupted more than 6,600 health facilities, cutting off care for more than 53 million people; it also estimates that 239 million people will require humanitarian assistance in 2026.
That is the environment in which the next outbreak may begin.
Emergency response must be linked to humanitarian crises
Pandemics do not occur in ideal conditions. They emerge amid conflict, displacement, poverty, climate shocks and broken health systems.
A disease outbreak in a stable capital is one kind of challenge. A disease outbreak in a war zone, refugee camp or flood-hit region is another. In crisis settings, routine vaccination falls, malnutrition rises, clean water becomes scarce, hospitals are damaged, and health workers may be attacked or unpaid.
WHO’s 2026 emergency appeal states that health emergencies are unfolding while global response capacities are stretched and under-resourced, and that WHO is prioritizing highest-impact life-saving services while strengthening coordination with governments, health cluster partners and local responders.
This is why WHO reform cannot be only about future pandemics. It must also strengthen emergency operations, humanitarian coordination and frontline delivery.
The next pandemic threat may not begin in a laboratory city. It may begin in a crowded camp where surveillance is weak and people have no access to care.
Misinformation is now a public health emergency
The pandemic showed that misinformation can kill.
False cures, anti-vaccine claims, conspiracy theories, communal blame, manipulated statistics and political propaganda weakened public health response around the world. People ignored medical advice not only because they lacked information, but because they were drowning in bad information.
The WHO cannot control the global information ecosystem. But it must become more effective in public communication.
That means faster myth-busting, clearer language, regional communication partnerships, local-language material, cooperation with trusted community leaders, and better engagement with social media platforms. It also means avoiding technocratic messaging that ordinary people cannot understand.
Public health communication is not a press release. It is behavioural strategy.
A reformed WHO must speak not only to ministers and experts, but to citizens.
The WHO must protect independence from both donors and geopolitics
The WHO’s greatest challenge is independence.
If it criticizes a powerful country, it risks diplomatic backlash. If it avoids criticism, it risks credibility. If it relies heavily on a few donors, it risks financial pressure. If it depends entirely on member-state cooperation, it risks being slowed by national politics.
This is why predictable assessed contributions are essential. The more core funding comes from broad membership dues rather than earmarked voluntary contributions, the more institutional independence WHO can preserve.
But money is not enough. Governance reform must also protect technical decision-making. Emergency assessments should be insulated from geopolitical bargaining. Expert committees should be transparent. Conflicts of interest should be managed. Country offices should be strong enough to detect problems but accountable enough to avoid capture by host governments.
A global health institution must be diplomatic, but not submissive.
India and the Global South need a stronger WHO
The Global South has the greatest stake in WHO reform.
Rich countries can sometimes bypass global systems. They can buy supplies, sign bilateral deals, fund private research, manufacture domestically and deploy diplomatic influence. Poorer countries cannot rely on that model. They need a fair multilateral system.
For India, the issue is more complex. India is both a major developing country and a global health supplier. It has a vast domestic population, major pharmaceutical capacity, vaccine manufacturing experience, digital health ambitions and a growing diplomatic role in the Global South.
India should support WHO reform that strengthens equity, local production, traditional and modern health-system integration where evidence supports it, pandemic financing, and transparent supply-chain coordination. It should also push for a stronger voice for developing countries in global health governance.
But India should not treat WHO reform only as a Western-versus-non-Western debate. The real division is between a world prepared for pandemics and a world that repeats the same failures.
Reform must avoid two extremes
The debate around WHO often falls into two extremes.
One extreme treats the WHO as if it should have unlimited authority over national health policy. That is unrealistic and politically dangerous. Health decisions must remain accountable to citizens through national institutions.
The other extreme treats the WHO as if it is a threat to sovereignty and should be weakened. That is equally dangerous. No country can manage transnational health threats alone.
The correct approach is disciplined multilateralism.
The WHO should not govern countries. It should coordinate, warn, verify, support, standardize, mobilize and hold the system together. Countries should retain sovereignty, but sovereignty must include obligations: timely reporting, data sharing, scientific cooperation, fair access, and investment in preparedness.
In the 21st century, sovereignty cannot mean isolation. It must mean responsible participation.
What meaningful WHO reform should include
WHO reform should focus on ten practical changes.
First, stronger outbreak verification powers using multiple data sources, not only official state reporting.
Second, predictable core financing through higher assessed contributions and fewer donor-tied priorities.
Third, faster emergency declaration systems with transparent reasoning and clear escalation categories.
Fourth, stronger regional and country offices with better technical capacity and accountability.
Fifth, independent review of WHO and member-state conduct after major health emergencies.
Sixth, binding commitments on equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and protective equipment.
Seventh, stronger support for local and regional manufacturing in the Global South.
Eighth, better coordination between human health, animal health and environmental surveillance through One Health.
Ninth, a stronger misinformation-response architecture.
Tenth, clearer rules for cooperation during conflict and humanitarian crises.
These reforms are not optional. They are the minimum architecture for pandemic survival.
The next pandemic will test memory
The danger after every crisis is forgetting.
After SARS, the world improved some systems but still entered COVID underprepared. After Ebola, emergency response improved but health-system fragility remained. After COVID, leaders promised never again. But budget cuts, geopolitical rivalry and reform fatigue are already testing that promise.
The real question is whether COVID will become a turning point or merely a trauma.
If the pandemic agreement remains incomplete, if the IHR amendments are ignored, if WHO financing remains fragile, if major powers disengage, if equity remains rhetorical and if surveillance systems remain weak, the world will have learned the wrong lesson.
It will have mourned the dead without building the institutions needed to protect the living.
Conclusion: reform the WHO before the next emergency, not during it
WHO reform remains urgent because pandemics are not rare accidents in a disconnected world. They are predictable risks in an interconnected one.
Air travel is dense. Cities are crowded. Climate change is altering disease patterns. Human-animal interfaces are expanding. Conflict is weakening health systems. Misinformation travels faster than official guidance. Supply chains are concentrated. Trust is fragile. Biotechnology is advancing. Political polarization is deep.
In such a world, the WHO cannot remain underfunded, overburdened and politically exposed.
The choice is not between national sovereignty and global health cooperation. The choice is between responsible sovereignty and dangerous illusion. No country becomes safer by weakening the system that detects, coordinates and responds to threats crossing borders.
The WHO must reform. It must become faster, more transparent, better financed, more independent and more equity-driven.
But member states must reform too. They must stop treating global health as charity, stop blaming WHO for failures they helped create, stop hiding outbreaks behind sovereignty, and stop funding preparedness only after disaster arrives.
The pandemic experience gave the world a brutal education.
The next test will reveal whether anyone studied.
