Is the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations' global health agency, going bankrupt? No, that's not true: The WHO's audited financial statements reported a surplus for both 2022 and 2021, and the organization has not made any statements warning of fiscal turbulence ahead.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on December 3, 2023. The still image showed the WHO's logo under a banner that read (translated from Hungarian to English by Lead Stories staff):
It's going bankrupt ..
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Dec 7 14:32:06 2023 UTC)
There is no evidence that the WHO is in fiscal trouble. Its 2022 financial report, audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, said the WHO racked up a surplus of $600 million in 2022, following a surplus of $351 million in 2021. Net assets and equity stood at more than $5 billion, the report said.
It is accurate that the WHO has experienced a decline in "assessed contributions," the membership dues paid by member states, which now make up about 16 percent of the total budget, according to a statement on the WHO's website. However, this downward trend has been offset by voluntary contributions from donors who "direct funding according to their priorities," the statement said.
The WHO's biggest source of revenue for 2022 was the United States, which accounted for 21 percent of the total budget. Germany ponied up 15 percent and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supplied 10 percent of funds for the year, the WHO's 2022 financial report said.
A Google search for the keywords "World Health Organization" and "bankrupt" conducted on December 7, 2023, (archived here) did not turn up any statements pointing to impending financial doom for the organization.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on Hungarian claims about the WHO can be found here.
