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WHO Director-General Dr Tedros was in Berlin this week, meeting with German ministers and members of the Bundestag. The official reason given by the WHO was that he was attending the World Health Summit. Behind the scenes, there is a panic over Germany's plan to cut its financial contribution to the organisation.
According to Health Policy Watch, at the World Health Summit in October 2024, Germany pledged $262.2 million to the WHO for the years 2025 to 2028. Of that, only $84 million has actually been committed in the 2026 German national budget. The remaining $180 million is, at this point, anyone's guess. On top of that, Germany has already moved to halve its annual funding for the WHO's pandemic surveillance hub in Berlin; cutting it from €30 million to €15 million a year.
To understand why this matters, consider the state the WHO is already in. The organisation is currently facing an estimated $640 million budget gap for the 2026-2027 period, has cut at least a quarter of its workforce over the past sixteen months, and is now preparing to elect a new Director-General while functionally broke and with its largest donor having left.
That Germany, one of the WHO's most committed backers, is having second thoughts about its pledges speaks volumes about confidence in the organisation.
Notably, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declined Dr Tedros's request for a meeting during the visit, which is not the reception a Director-General would have hoped for, and suggests the relationship between Berlin and Geneva is not quite as warm as either side might publicly care to admit.