My paper “History of global burden of disease assessment at the World Health Organization”  has just been published in Archives of Public Health. It reviews WHO work on Global Burden of Disease over the last 20 years and the challenges facing it. While new global health actors and funders have arisen in recent decades, funding to carry out WHO’s expanding mandate has declined. For many Member States, the WHO still retains a unique mandate and accountability for global health statistics and a moral authority as a setter for norms and standards that is not available to academic or NGO groups.  It is unclear whether WHO will continue to have the resources or will to carry out its own mandate in a world which at present seems to be increasingly turning away from multilateral global institutions, rules and norms.