When executive board members of the World Health Organization sat down for their annual meeting in Geneva in January, many powerful figures spoke forcefully of the need to reform the leading global authority on health and disease.

"It's time to stop talking," Stewart Jessamine, New Zealand's director of public health and a WHO executive board member, told the delegates. "We have to change."

Jimmy Kolker, a leading member of the U.S. delegation, told the meeting the WHO must "recognize how crucial this moment is for the future of the organization, and the resources and the trust that are in the balance."