The World Health Organization (WHO) needs reform to prevent a recurrence of crises such as West Africa's Ebola outbreak, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd said Thursday.

Rudd is leading a two-year study to suggest ways to improve the effectiveness of the United Nations system and other global bodies, which are often deadlocked by disagreements between states or hamstrung by their internal bureaucracy.

Rudd said he was seeking practical recommendations to improve the system's effectiveness, adding he thought the WHO suffered from a "systemic problem" in the way power was shared between its central organization and regional branches.

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