The World Health Organization (WHO) Academy in Lyon, France, officially opened its doors recently with a high-profile inauguration ceremony. The event was attended by WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus; French President Emmanuel Macron, alongside dozens of health ministers, international representatives, donors, and local French partners.

The WHO Academy is a revolutionary project which will contribute to a better trained health workforce around the world, through the most ambitious lifelong training programme ever designed in the field of public health.

More concretely, through trainings delivered in Lyon and everywhere in the world on its online platform, it will give access to the critical skills and competencies as well as to the latest knowledge and know-how in terms of public health to health professionals, policy-makers, and WHO’s own workforce.

Owing to partnerships built with the best academic and research institutes in public health around the globe, the WHO Academy intends to address identified weaknesses in health systems – the first of which being the growing global shortage of health and care workers, projected to reach 10 million by 2030, but also the widening gap in terms of access to the latest research and innovation. The majority of this shortfall will be felt in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Africa. With the view to build and share access to the most advanced technology for health and care and research and development in the field of health, including AI, the Academy will bring additional capacity and efficiency directly to health systems.

The WHO Academy’s new state-of-the-art campus spans 11 000 square meters and includes: twenty-two training rooms, two distance-learning rooms, a simulation centre, an emergency operations centre, a TV recording studio, a modern auditorium and a library.

The Academy also has an online learning platform that democratises access to world-class health education. This platform features free, cutting-edge courses on priority health topics, ensuring that professionals across the globe can access high-quality training, regardless of their location.