Too many factors hold the WHO back.

While WHO officials are certainly not beyond reproach, much of the recent criticism reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the WHO and its mission. Many critics seem to imagine the organization as a global epidemic rescue unit that puts out fires wherever they occur. Yet that is simply not the role the WHO was built to fulfill, nor has it ever been possible for it to do so, given the structural limitations that confine the organization.

The World Health Organization was established in 1948 as part of a broader attempt to reconfigure international relations and establish a lasting postwar order, centered around the United Nations, that would guarantee peace and prosperity. It was founded as a U.N. specialized agency with a broad mandate to promote “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health,” and it defines “health” as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.”

The WHO’s ability to fulfill its ambitions was hampered from the start by two main factors. First, WHO officials have always had to be content with vastly inadequate resources. In the late 1940s, member states limited the WHO budget to a measly $5 million — a decision significantly influenced by Congress imposing a strict limit on what the United States would contribute financially. Even today, its biannual budget amounts to roughly $4.5 billion, which is less than what some major U.S. hospitals get to work with.

Secondly, the WHO’s quest for “world health” has often been stymied by political conflicts regarding its mission, which has time and again prevented the organization from getting involved in crucial areas of international health work.

After the Second World War, underlying the creation of specialized agencies like the WHO was the idea that “political” questions should be separated from purely “technical” problems. The potential for strictly technical, consensual collaboration seemed high in the realm of public health, as diseases obviously did not respect national boundaries.

But the vision of pure, apolitical health work never materialized because global health politics were always shaped by debates over what was “political” (and thus outside WHO’s jurisdiction) and what was merely “technical.” The WHO’s complicated relationship to the U.N.’s human rights work illustrated the complexity of this debate.