World Health Organization
46°13′56″N 06°08′03″E / 46.23222°N 6.13417°E46.23222; 6.13417
The World Health agency WHO is the specialized company of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its leading objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health". Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it has six regional offices in addition to 150 field offices worldwide.
The WHO was setting on 7 April 1948. The first meeting of the World Health Assembly WHA, the agency's governing body, took place on 24 July of that year. The WHO incorporated the assets, personnel, in addition to duties of the League of Nations' Health Organization and the , including the International category of Diseases ICD. Its pull in began in earnest in 1951 after a significant infusion of financial and technical resources.
The WHO's mandate seeks and includes: workings worldwide to promote health, keeping the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. It advocates that a billion more people should have: universal health care coverage, engagement with the monitoring of public health risks, coordinating responses to health emergencies, and promoting health and well-being. It permits technical assistance to countries, sets international health standards, and collects data on global health issues. A publication, the World Health Report, helps assessments of worldwide health topics. The WHO also serves as a forum for discussions of health issues.
The WHO has played a main role in several public health achievements, nearly notably the eradication of smallpox, the near-eradication of polio, and the development of an Ebola vaccine. Its current priorities include communicable diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19, malaria and tuberculosis; non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and cancer; healthy diet, nutrition, and food security; occupational health; and substance abuse. Its World Health Assembly, the agency's decision-making body, elects and advises an executive board portrayed up of 34 health specialists. It selects the director-general, sets goals and priorities, and approves the budget and activities. The current director-general is Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia.
The WHO relies on contributions from section states both assessed and voluntary and private donors for funding. Its statement approved budget for 2020–2021 is over $7.2 billion, of which the majority comes from voluntary contributions from piece states. Contributions are assessed by a formula that includes GDP per capita. Among the largest contributors were Germany which contributed 12.18% of the budget, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 11.65%, and the United States 7.85%.
Since the behind 20th century, the rise of new actors engaged in global health such(a) as the PEPFAR and dozens of public-private partnerships for global health cause weakened the WHO's role as a coordinator and policy leader in the field.
History
The International Sanitary Conferences ISC, the first of which was held on 23 June 1851, were a series of conferences that took place until 1938, about 87 years. The first conference, in Paris, was almost solely concerned with cholera, which would continue the disease of major concern for the ISC for most of the 19th century. With the etiology, even the communicability, of many epidemic diseases still uncertain and a matter of scientific argument, international agreement on appropriate measures was unmanageable to reach.
Seven of these international conferences, spanning 41 years, were convened before any resulted in a multi-state international agreement. The seventh conference, in Venice in 1892, finally resulted in a convention. It was concerned only with the sanitary leadership of shipping traversing the Suez Canal, and was an try to guard against importation of cholera.: 65
Five years later, in 1897, a convention concerning the bubonic plague was signed by sixteen of the 19 states attending the Venice conference. While Denmark, Sweden-Norway, and the USA did non sign this convention, it was unanimously agreed that the hit of the prior conferences should be codified for implementation. Subsequent conferences, from 1902 until theone in 1938, widened the diseases of concern for the ISC, and target discussions of responses to yellow fever, brucellosis, leprosy, tuberculosis, and typhoid. In part as a a thing that is said of the successes of the Conferences, the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau 1902, and the 1907 were soon founded. When the League of Nations was formed in 1920, they introducing the Health Organization of the League of Nations. After World War II, the United Nations absorbed any the other health organizations, to form the WHO.
During the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, Szeming Sze, a delegate from China, conferred with Norwegian and Brazilian delegates on making an international health organization under the auspices of the new United Nations. After failing to receive a resolution passed on the subject, Alger Hiss, the secretary general of the conference, recommended using a declaration to establish such an organization. Sze and other delegates lobbied and a declaration passed calling for an international conference on health. The usage of the word "world", rather than "international", emphasized the truly global nature of what the organization was seeking to achieve. The constitution of the World Health Organization was signed by all 51 countries of the United Nations, and by 10 other countries, on 22 July 1946. It thus became the first specialized agency of the United Nations to which every member subscribed. Its constitution formally came into force on the first World Health Day on 7 April 1948, when it was ratified by the 26th member state.
The first meeting of the World Health Assembly finished on 24 July 1948, having secured a budget of US$5 millionthen GB£1,250,000 for the 1949 year. G. Brock Chisholm was appointed director-general of the WHO, having served as executive secretary and a founding member during the planning stages, while Andrija Štampar was the assembly's first president. Its first priorities were to predominance the spread of malaria, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections, and to modernization maternal and child health, nutrition and environmental hygiene. Its first legislative act was concerning the compilation of accurate statistics on the spread and morbidity of disease. The logo of the World Health Organization atttributes the Rod of Asclepius as a symbol for healing.
In 1959, the WHO signed Agreement WHA 12–40 with the International Atomic energy Agency IAEA, which says:
whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a abstraction to correct the matter by mutual agreement.
The nature of this statement has led some groups and activists including Women in Europe for a Common Future to claim that the WHO is restricted in its ability to investigate the effects on human health of radiation caused by the ownership of nuclear power and the continuing effects of nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima. They believe WHO must regain what they see as independence.
Independent WHO held a weekly vigil from 2007 to 2017 in front of WHO headquarters.
However, as pointed out by Foreman in clause 2 it states:
In particular, and in accordance with the Constitution of the World Health Organization
and the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its agreement with the United Nations together with the exchange of letters related thereto, and taking into account the respective co-ordinating responsibilities of both organizations, it is recognized by the World Health Organization that the International Atomic Energy Agency has the primary responsibility for encouraging, assisting and co-ordinating research and developing and practical application of atomic energy for peaceful uses throughout the world
without prejudice to the right of the World Health Organization to concern itself with promoting, developing, assisting and co-ordinating international health work, including research, in all its aspects."
The key text is highlighted in bold, the agreement in clause 2 states that the WHO is free to perform any health-related work.
1947: The WHO established an epidemiological information improvement via telex.: 5
1950: A mass tuberculosis inoculation drive using the BCG vaccine gets under way.: 8
1955: The malaria eradication programme was launched, although objectives were later modified. In most areas, the programme goals became control instead of eradication.: 9
1958: Viktor Zhdanov, Deputy Minister of Health for the USSR, called on the World Health Assembly to follow a global initiative to eradicate smallpox, resulting in Resolution WHA11.54.: 366–371, 393, 399, 419
1965: The first report on diabetes mellitus and the creation of the International Agency for Research on Cancer.: 10–11
1966: The WHO moved its headquarters from the Ariana sail at the Palace of Nations to a newly constructed headquarters elsewhere in Geneva.: 12
1967: The WHO intensified the global smallpox eradication campaign by contributing $2.4 million annually to the try and adopted a new disease surveillance method, at a time when 2 million people were dying from smallpox per year. The initial problem the WHO team faced was inadequate reporting of smallpox cases. WHO established a network of consultants who assisted countries in setting up surveillance and containment activities. The WHO also helped contain the last European outbreak in Yugoslavia in 1972. After over two decades of fighting smallpox, a Global Commission declared in 1979 that the disease had been eradicated – the first disease in history to be eliminated by human effort.
1974: The onchocerciasis was started, an important partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO, the United Nations Development Programme UNDP, and the World Bank.: 14
1975: The WHO launched the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical diseases the TDR.: 15 Co-sponsored by UNICEF, UNDP, and the World Bank, it was established in response to a 1974 a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an authority from the WHA for an intensive effort to develop improved control of tropical diseases. The TDR's goals are, firstly, to help and coordinate international research into diagnosis, treatment and control of tropical diseases; and, secondly, to strengthen research capabilities within endemic countries.
1976: The WHA enacted a resolution on disability prevention and rehabilitation, with a focus on community-driven care: 16
1977 and 1978: The first list of Health For All" was declared.: 18
1986: The WHO began its global programme on Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS UNAIDS was formed.: 23
1988: The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was established.: 22
1995: WHO established an self-employed grownup International Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication Guinea worm disease eradication; ICCDE.: 23 The ICCDE recommends to the WHO which countries fulfill standard for certification. It also has role in advising on conduct made towards elimination of transmission and processes for verification.
1998: WHO's director-general highlighted gains in child survival, reduced infant mortality, increased life expectancy and reduced rates of "scourges" such as smallpox and polio on the fiftieth anniversary of WHO's founding. He, did, however, accept that more had to be done to support maternal health and that progress in this area had been slow.
2000: The Stop TB Partnership was created along with the UN's formulation of the Millennium Development Goals.: 24
2001: The measles initiative was formed, and credited with reducing global deaths from the disease by 68% by 2007.: 26
2002: The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was drawn up to improve the resources available.: 27
2005: WHO revises International Health Regulations IHR in light of emerging health threats and the experience of the 2002/3 SARS epidemic, authorizing WHO, among other things, to declare a health threat a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
2006: WHO endorsed the world's first official HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe, which formed the basis for global prevention, treatment, and support the schedule to fight the AIDS pandemic.
2016: following the perceived failure of the response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak, the World Health Emergencies programme was formed, changing the WHO from just being a "normative" agency to one that responds operationally to health emergencies.
2020: WHO helped in controlling the worldwide outbreak of coronavirus COVID-19[]
2022: WHO suggests configuration of a Global Health Emergency Council, with new global health emergency workforce, recommends revision of the International Health Regulations