CAG voted in as WHO's auditor for a second term with record 73 pc votes

In the last few months, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) may have come down strongly on several Indian drug manufacturing companies for not maintaining quality, but its belief in the Indian national auditor the Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s (CAG) capability and professionalism remains steely.

Once again, the vibrant ‘India story’ resonated strongly on the global stage in Geneva on Monday. 

Already holding the year-long chair for the increasingly important Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the G20, India’s CAG has been voted to be the external auditor for the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva, for a four-year term from 2024 to 2027. 

Even more than the result of the voting, what is noteworthy here is the overwhelming size of the mandate.

An overwhelming majority—114 out of total 156 votes or 73 per cent of the member countries —voted for India’s re-election.

Besides WHO, the CAG is currently the external auditor of Food and Agriculture Organization (2020-2025), International Atomic Energy Agency (2022-2027), Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2021-2023) and Inter-Parliamentary Union (2020-2022).

In recent months, several Indian drug manufacturing companies have earned WHO’s ire due to quality control issues.

India-made cough syrup brands have reportedly claimed the lives of 66 very young children in The Gambia last year.

On October 5, 2022, the WHO issued an alert headlined ‘Substandard (contaminated) paediatric medicines identified in WHO region of Africa’ where it named several Indian companies exporting ‘substandard’ medicines.

And then again on January 11, 2023, WHO issued a product alert against India-made cough syrups that allegedly claimed the lives of 18 children in Uzbekistan.