The World Health Organization (WHO) wants a raise. Again, the organization increases its mandatory membership dues—known as assessed contributions—by 20%. For 2026 and 2027, this will amount to an additional $120 million per year, drawn straight from taxpayers around the globe. But before we open our wallets, we should ask a crucial question: Is the WHO truly earning this extra cash?
The answer, increasingly, appears to be no.
While global healthcare systems buckle under the strain of underfunding, growing waitlists, and staff shortages, the WHO is busy redirecting hundreds of millions of dollars into flexible, unaccountable funding streams it controls without oversight. Unlike voluntary contributions from nations that are earmarked for specific health programs, assessed contributions allow WHO leadership—particularly Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus—almost free rein in how the funds are spent.
That might explain why more money is being used to upgrade the WHO’s Geneva headquarters than to fight polio. Or why senior staff enjoy perks such as $33,000-per-child education allowances—enough to fund lifesaving HIV treatment for 110 South Africans for a full year. Meanwhile, the average cost of WHO’s 301 most senior staff totals nearly $130 million annually—roughly $432,000 per person, including generous benefits and allowances.
Let’s put that in perspective.
The $120 million being extracted in new dues each year could directly fund healthcare for:
- 15,000 Germans
- 40,000 Poles
- 82,000 Georgians
- 100,000 South Africans
- 500,000 Indians
That’s not a theoretical trade-off. That’s the opportunity cost of bureaucratic bloat.
Even more troubling, this shift toward “core funding” is part of a deliberate WHO strategy: to move away from specific, donor-driven initiatives and toward general budget increases it can spend at will—on salaries, travel, and yes, real estate. These are not funds being poured into pandemic preparedness or child vaccination programs. They are being funneled into a top-heavy administrative structure with minimal transparency and questionable accountability.
The WHO’s defenders argue that the organization needs more freedom to respond to global health threats. But freedom without scrutiny leads to mission drift and misallocation. The organization already has a poor record of pandemic response and a reputation for political entanglements. The last thing it needs is a blank check.
It’s time to stop pretending that the WHO is a lean, targeted health response team. It has become, in too many respects, a bloated bureaucracy more focused on expanding its institutional footprint than solving the world’s most urgent health problems.
National governments should refuse further increases to assessed contributions until the WHO commits to radical transparency reforms, trims senior compensation packages, and rededicates itself to programmatic funding that puts patient care first. We owe that much to the people who are actually sick—and not just those with corner offices in Geneva.
The WHO doesn’t deserve a raise. The world’s patients do.
