WHO member states spent hours last week debating, disagreeing and finally voting on a number of issues concerning Palestine, Ukraine and even language on gender, in the just concluded 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva last week.
This reveals that no forum can be insulated from geopolitical tensions, and even more so when there is no way to clearly delineate health matters in conflict zones from dynamic political realities. (In the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, more than 400 attacks on healthcare facilities have been witnessed with a majority of them involving the use of force.)
While some countries believe that several voting rounds sucked time and energy away from the technical matters in health – a natural mainstay of the World Health Assembly, others regret the politicization but say that this cannot be prevented.