COPENHAGEN: Drastic aid cuts, notably by the United States, have made it vital for Europe to better manage health resources, the director of WHO Europe told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a huge challenge, because the majority of our programs were funded by USAID and the US,\u201d Hans Kluge of the World Health Organization Europe told AFP in an interview days before a meeting of the 53 countries of the WHO European region.<\/p>\n
Since taking office in January, US President Donald Trump has slashed US international aid and effectively dismantled USAID, the world\u2019s largest humanitarian aid agency.<\/p>\n
Kluge said the WHO was experiencing an \u201cexistential\u201d crisis with countries such as Britain, France and Germany, in addition to the United States, contributing significantly less.<\/p>\n
Despite a 20-percent budget cut, WHO Europe wants to boost its role within domestic European health administrations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe WHO Europe of the future… is healthier, stronger, trusted, evidence-based, and politically neutral,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kluge\u2019s plan is based on restructuring the organization and prioritising its missions.<\/p>\n
– Mental health crisis –<\/p>\n
Kluge said WHO Europe needed a \u201cdual track\u201d approach needing to manage \u201cmanage a current crisis \u2014 (it) can be war, flooding\u201d while keeping \u201ccore public health programs operational.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the biggest lesson learned from (the) Covid-19\u201d pandemic, he said.<\/p>\n
In Ukraine, for example, Europe is focusing its efforts on defense and \u201cnot enough on health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Europe must also tackle its mental health problem, aggravated by war, loneliness, anxiety and the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s one of the big things, the hottest issues,\u201d he said, stressing the need to build up \u201ccitizen resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n
One European in six and one child in five will experience mental health problems at some point in their life, according to the WHO.<\/p>\n
Kluge said his organization also needed to address worrying regional trends including youth addiction, a lack of online protection, the climate crisis and non-infectious diseases.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can channel our few resources in those directions,\u201d he insisted.<\/p>\n
Vaccinations are also crucial, he said, pointing out that in 2023, there were 366,000 children who had never received any kind of vaccine. In 2024, that number had risen to 440,000.<\/p>\n
Mainly reasons such as the need to travel for vaccinations, costs and a lack of qualified health personnel led to this, he said, adding that medical misinformation was rampant as well.<\/p>\n
Vaccination is \u201cthe most cost-effective public health tool which we have. So, we cannot afford to lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prevention was also key to ensuring Europeans\u2019 health, Kluge stressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou put one euro in prevention, you get seven euros out of it,\u201d said the 56-year-old doctor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is time that Europe should take care of Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COPENHAGEN: Drastic aid cuts, notably by the United States, have made it vital for Europe to better manage health resources, the director of WHO Europe told AFP. \u201cWe have a huge challenge, because the majority of our programs were funded by USAID and the US,\u201d Hans Kluge of the World Health Organization Europe told AFP …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":88635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88636,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88620\/revisions\/88636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}