Health Ethics & Governance
We provide a focal point for the examination of ethical issues raised by activities throughout the Organization and foster discussion and debate on diverse topics in global health ethics.
About

Embedding ethics in the path to universal health coverage

WHO’s commitment to achieving universal health coverage and the goal of 1 billion more people benefitting from universal health coverage by 2023 exemplifies the ethical values at the core of public health. UHC is a powerful expression of fairness, solidarity and recognition of health as a human right. 

Whether in providing justification for UHC, identifying the interests at stake in health system reform, or providing guidance in building more robust health systems, ethics and governance both play a central role.

Particular priorities of the Health Ethics and Governance Unit include ethical considerations related to priority-setting, ageing, health systems and implementation research, building ethics capacity, good governance of medicines, public health surveillance, and immunization.

Publications

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Technical information

Good governance in medicines

Good governance in the pharmaceutical sector includes measures to ensure a transparent process of drug procurement, drug control, rational drug use and access to medicines in an equitable manner to all sections of the community.

Integrity and ethical governance measures are essential for effective health care delivery in a health system. For a number of years, the Global Health Ethics Unit has been supporting the Department of Essential Medicines and Health Products in the development of the Good Governance for Medicine (GGM) framework.
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Developing guidelines for public health surveillance

Surveillance is one of the most fundamental activities of public health, involving different areas and practices.
--such as non-communicable disease registers, outbreak investigations, and health systems research. Public health surveillance raises multiple ethical issues concerning, among others, the use/non-use of informed consent or the provision/non-provision of standards of care.
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