France signs agreements to support WHO's work

Geneva – His Excellency Jérôme Bonnafont, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations in Geneva, and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, today signed several funding agreements totaling € 25.5 million to support critical health priorities. The agreements include € 4.5 million of funding for the Core Voluntary Contribution Account (CVCA) of WHO; these are fully flexible funds which allow WHO to allocate resources to key priorities outlined in its General Programme of Work. An additional € 15 million will be used to deliver on specific key priorities, such as One Health, the advancement of universal health coverage, and primary health care, communicable and noncommunicable diseases, the medical countermeasure initiative, and the country readiness strengthening through WHO’s office in Lyon. A large part of the contribution (€ 6 million) is aimed at covering the humanitarian response on several fronts: € 2 million will go towards enhancing mental health initiatives in Ukraine; € 0.35 million is to support the response to the cholera outbreak in Malawi; € 1 million will support WHO’s humanitarian response in Gaza, with an additional € 2 million dedicated...