Jakarta (ANTARA) - The establishment of a "world health bank," which Indonesia is seeking to propose during its G20 Presidency, would need to be preceded by improved global governance, an epidemiologist from Australia's Griffith University has said.

"That's a good and ideal idea, but if the architecture or its global governance has not been improved, it will be like other global institutions that take on the role of financial support," said Dicky Budiman when contacted by ANTARA here on Thursday.

Responding to the idea of building a "world bank" for addressing global health issues at the G20 forum, Budiman said that establishing a new institution at the global level would be very difficult to do.

There could be several possible problems, such as funding to establish the institution, which would then affect the amount of support from countries that have a shortage of funds, especially to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, he explained.

Meanwhile, regarding its governance, the government must reconsider the role of the people who will be involved in it so that the institution can run optimally, he advised. Unfortunately, such issues are often not resolved properly and end up causing chaos, he said.

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He cited the example of several global organizations dealing with HIV/AIDS. Budiman said that many programs have been implemented, either by UNAIDS, the World Health Organization (WHO), or UNICEF, however, the assistance provided on the field still overlaps, and does not synergize.

“It often happens that in one region of a country, they are supplied with a lot of financial assistance, but in its implementation, the assistance becomes ineffective as it overlaps and there are no programs that build human resource capacity. No matter how much assistance is given, if the human resources are not competent and the strategy is not right, the assistance will be in vain,” Budiman observed.

Given that global governance has not been well developed, Budiman advised the government to not rush to build a new institution just because a certain institution is not running effectively and satisfactorily.

Instead of creating a new institution on a larger scale, it would be better if the government and other countries try to fix the problems in the global governance architecture by involving the existing system, he added.

He mentioned the possibility of establishing a "health bank" within the WHO, which has long been involved in handling health issues by seeking solutions together with other countries so that many problems can be handled properly.

"So, I think it's a good idea because it tries to identify the problem. However, I think it would be better if the health bank was placed in an institution like the WHO," said Budiman, who is also a pandemic researcher and part of global health security initiatives. (

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Translator: Katriana
Editor: Suharto
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