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The World Health Professions Alliance speaks for more than 41 million health professionals worldwide, assembling essential knowledge and experience from the key health professions in more than 130 countries.

EB138 Agenda Item 5.3 - Framework of engagement with non‐State actors

English
WHA year

January 2016

Honourable Chairperson, Distinguished Delegates,

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the World Medical Association, the International Council of Nurses, the International Pharmaceutical Federation, the World Dental Federation and the World Confederation for Physical Therapy, which together form the World Health Professions Alliance.

NSAs in official relations with WHO have already been invited to disclose publically the information on their financing, membership, governance, relationship to other industries and areas of our collaboration with the WHO.

We are looking forward to receiving a report on the outcome of this comprehensive process, to strengthen the confidence in the value of this exercise.

We agree with the accreditation criteria 64bis A‐E and G‐I listed at page 21. However, the point F stating “the Membership of an NGO should not contain individuals associated with private sector entities or philanthropic foundations and academic institutions not at arm’s length with private sector” is unrealistic to fulfil for individual membership‐based NGOs.

It will either lead to a major workload to assess systematically conflicts of interest for all their members, or it will force them to proactively exclude large number (in hundreds or thousands) of members who are for example active employees, researchers or academics with some links with private sector.

We believe that there is no value for this process, as these individual members may not be seating at the Board of the NGOs, nor interacting with the WHO. Instead, it would make more sense that such conflict of interests management is done at the Board level of the NGOs and with individuals interacting with WHO. This question deserves a proper consultation with NGOs.

Finally, we would also welcome more information on the process of evaluation of the implementation of the Framework scheduled for 2018.