Global Health Otherwise (GHO) shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Who Will Save Global Health?
Global health systems depend on countries working together through shared institutions. When powerful nations step back, those systems crack. That is exactly what is happening now.
Professor Ilona Kickbusch, writing for Chatham House in May 2026, offers a critical warning: the US withdrawal from the World Health Organization has left a $600 million funding gap, forcing WHO to cut its budget by 20 percent. Bilateral health deals are replacing multilateral cooperation, shifting costs onto weaker nations without giving them real power.
Kickbusch draws on speeches by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney and Finland’s President Alexander Stubb to make her case. Carney argues that middle powers, countries neither dominant nor powerless, must build flexible coalitions around specific health issues like pandemics and digital governance. Stubb pushes further, insisting the Global South must share real decision-making power, not just participate symbolically.
Kickbusch identifies three urgent actions for the May 2026 World Health Assembly:
- Drive genuine governance reform.
- Create binding digital health rules.
- Directly confront the threat that bilateral deals pose to multilateral health systems.
Middle powers must urgently reform WHO governance, address digital health gaps, and resist bilateralism before the 2026 World Health Assembly closes this narrow window for action.”
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