WHO will have terminated, retired or separated by agreement an estimated 2371 staff worldwide by mid-2026 – shedding about 25% of a workforce that numbered 9,457 in December 2024 – a 15-year peak. 

That’s according to a new report that is to be presented and discussed with WHO member states on Wednesday. 

Despite the huge cuts, there remained a $141 million gap in 2025 salary costs as of September 2025 – and a projected $1.05 billion fundingg gap for the 2026-27. That as compared to a $1.7 billion gap in May, 2025, according to the report, posted on the WHO website Tuesday morning with no announcement. It was shared Tuesday evening by WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a message to all staff worldwide.   

Significantly, the report also provides no data as to the number of non-staff consultants who continue to be employed by the organization – sometimes described as WHO’s “shadow workforce.” 

And that represents a significant gap in the reporting, in light of the more than 8,000 consultants who were engaged by WHO globally in 2024. 

Biggest absolute cuts among junior and mid-level staff 

In terms of regular staff, the biggest proportionate impacts of the cuts are falling on the highest and lowest levels in the system, according to the report, dated 24 October and labeled as “provisional and preliminary.” 

The number of senior directors, D2s, will have been reduced by 42% as of June 2026, in comparison to January 2025. Athough their numbers had swelled in recent years, the focus of a Health Policy Watch investigation in March,  those reductions are still tiny in absolute terms – representing cuts of 27 out of 65 posts.  Proportionately, entry-level P1s and P2 staff, the lowest members of the professional brackets, are the other hard hit category, reduced by 37%. Nearly one-third of mid-level P3 positions are also being slashed. 

And in terms of absolute numbers, it is the lower- and mid-level professionals, P3s and P4s, that are losing the most positions overall (283 & 342 positions respectively) – along with senior administrative staff G5 (381).  

Most dramatic cuts in Geneva Headquarters 

The cuts are most dramatic in WHO’s Geneva office where the workforce will be cut by 28% as of June 2026, a point at which separations of even long-term staff will have taken effect.  The African and European regions will take the second-largest hit with reductions of 25% and 24% respectively.  The regional comparisons date from 1 January 2025  when total staff numbered 9401, already slightly lower than the 31 December 2024 peak. This, and other data shared reflects small discrepancies in reporting on percentages of staff cutbacks, and baselines used for comparisons.  

The report however, makes it clear that by June 2026, some 1089 positions will have been shed through what WHO described as “natural attrition” – said to include retirements and early retirement, but also, seemingly, the non-renewal of short-term staff contracts. In addition, another 1,282 posts were abolished outright – with staff in those positions failing to be mapped or matched with alternative positions.  That makes for the net reduction of 2371 posts. 

Staff headcount would be lowest since 2014

The combined effect of terminations of short-term staff, early retirements and separations of longer term staff, as well as limited new hiring or reassignments, should bring WHO’s global staff headcount down to about 7360 professional and administrative positions by mid-2026, the analysis projects. 

That’s a level not seen since 2014, under the tenure of former WHO Director General Margaret Chan. Staff levels increased by about 728 posts  between 2014-2017, when Chan retired. 

The election of WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saw an even more major expansion of staff by another 1,429 positions – triggered to some extent, but not all, by the COVID 19 pandemic.   

Balance in gender, age and region of origin

Despite the lopsided impacts of the staff cuts on junior staff, the cuts have preserved a gender balance with even a slight margin for women workers as compared to previously, the report suggests. WHO’s 2026 workforce will also be slightly younger with a slim 51% majority of staff aged 30-49, as compared to 49% in the past.   

The report also shows significant new savings in travel and procurement costs in 2025, as compared to 2024- with a 50% reduction in travel costs as of end October.  

‘Shadow workforce’ undisclosed to Member States

Despite the very detailed breakdowns provided on staff cuts and costs, as well as travel and procurement, there’s no information in the report on the projected numbers of consultants and consultancies for 2026 at Headquarters – or globally. 

These non-stafff contracts in three different categories numbered over 8000 full-time-equivalent positions in 2024 – almost as many as regular staff.  

“Contractual services” largely made up of consultancies also represent about 28% of total budgeted organizational costs – in a draft 2026-27 budget that was part of a White Paper shared by the WHO administration in a  Planning, Budget and Advisory Committe (PBAC) meeting of member states in May, held behind closed doors. The paper was obtained by Health Policy Watch. 

Internal organizational charts obtained for some departments also reflect the heavy, ongoing use of non-staff personnel – even as staff are slashed. 

In the organizational chart of one small department, seen by Health Policy Watch, there are 4 staff posts (including the head), but close to 20 consultants – roughly a five-fold multiplier over what is visible in the staff-only chart presented to member states.

The internal organizational chart of another department shows just two fixed staff in a unit including over two dozen consultants or staff on contracts of under 60 days – which grants employees almost no staff rights at all. 

Said one insider, “the “headcount reduction” being marketed to Member States focuses on staff posts only and hides a large, parallel workforce.

“The prioritization and realignment process targeted established staff posts, with fixed-term staff receiving abolishment notices and three-month terminations. Yet there is no evidence of a comparable, systematic reduction in consultancies,” one staff member observed. 

Restructuring process – orderly and rationale or arbitrary and capricious?

Overall, the presentation to member states aims to present a picture of the WHO restructuring as a systematic process, with carefully established checks and balances, including regular staff engagement, Staff Association inputs, and an Ad Hoc Review Committee (ARC) of all department reorganization plans. 

Strikingly, none of the new organizational charts, organigrammes, are enclosed in the member state presentation or its annexes, making their review impossible.   

“The Member State briefing claims the process was guided by “transparency, fairness and humanity”, with “lessons learned integrated”;  “year-round engagement with Staff Associations”;  and “process co-design”, one staff member, who asked to remain anonymous. “But three Extraordinary General Assemblies (EGAs) of the HQ Staff Association formally adopted: a Motion of No Confidence in the 2025 prioritization process; a demand for an Immediate Freeze of separations and new recruitments; a demand for an Independent Review.”  See related story:  

WHO Staff in Geneva Call for Freeze In Layoffs and Independent Review of Downsizing Plans

“Administration emphasises that the process was ‘deliberate and thoughtful’, with a ‘co-designed process,’ another staff member said. 

But at the grassroots, post abolitions and reclassifications, as well as staff mapping and reassignments, were often tainted with favoritism and political patronage as well as considerable confusion, staff members subject to layoff and reassignment have claimed.

WHO’s Administration also ignored Staff Association-proposed alternative pathways for cost savings including: caps on salaries at the highest levels and a freeze on new senior hires; more decentralization of HQ functions to lower-cost duty stations; and a rollback of  consultancies before staff were hit. 

“Member States are not being told that staff put forward a comprehensive, alternative savings plan focused on senior-level burden sharing and reduced reliance on consultants – and that this package has not been adopted,” one staff member observed.

“WHO is now on a path that staff themselves have flagged as likely to end in mass litigation. That omission is critical to Member States’ understanding of risk.”

Image Credits: United States Mission Geneva, WHO , WHO, WHO Workforce Data, December 13 2024, WHO .