WHO" redirects here. For other uses, see WHO (disambiguation).

World Health Organization

Emblem of the United Nations.svg

World Health Organization Logo.svg

Abbreviation WHO

OMS

Formation 7 April 1948; 70 years ago

Type Specialized agency of the United Nations

Legal status Active

Headquarters Geneva, Switzerland

Head

Tedros Adhanom, Director-General

Parent organization

United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

Website who.int

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is
concerned with international public health. It was established on 7 April 1948, and is
headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is a member of the United Nations
Development Group. Its predecessor, the Health Organisation, was an agency of the League of
Nations.

The constitution of the World Health Organization had been signed by 61 countries on 22 July
1946, with the first meeting of the World Health Assembly finishing on 22 July 1946. It
incorporated the Office International d'Hygiène Publique and the League of Nations Health
Organization. Since its establishment, it has played a leading role in the eradication of smallpox.
Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and
tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-communicable diseases such as sexual and
reproductive health, development, and aging; nutrition, food security and healthy eating;
occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of reporting, publications,
and networking.
The WHO is responsible for the World Health Report, the worldwide World Health Survey, and
World Health Day. The current Director-General of the WHO is Tedros Adhanom, who started his
five-year term on 1 July 2017.[1]

Contents

1 History

1.1 Origins

1.2 Establishment

1.3 Operational history

1.4 Overall focus

1.5 Communicable diseases

1.6 Non-communicable diseases

1.7 Environmental health

1.8 Life course and life style

1.9 Surgery and trauma care

1.10 Emergency work

1.11 Health policy

1.12 Governance and support

1.12.1 Partnerships

1.12.2 Public health education and action

1.13 Data handling and publications

2 Structure

2.1 Membership

2.2 World Health Assembly and Executive Board

2.3 Regional offices

2.4 Director-General

2.5 Employees

2.6 Goodwill Ambassadors

2.7 Country and liaison offices

2.8 Financing and partnerships

3 Controversies

3.1 IAEA – Agreement WHA 12–40

3.2 Roman Catholic Church and AIDS

3.3 Intermittent preventive therapy

3.4 Diet and sugar intake

3.5 2009 swine flu pandemic

3.6 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak and reform efforts

3.7 FCTC implementation database

3.8 IARC controversies

3.9 Block of Taiwanese participation

3.10 Travel expenses

3.11 Robert Mugabe's role as a goodwill ambassador

4 World headquarters

4.1 Early views

4.2 Views 2013

5 See also

6 Notes and references

7 External links

History
Origins

The International Sanitary Conferences, originally held on 23 June 1851, were the first
predecessors of the WHO. A series of 14 conferences that lasted from 1851 to 1938, the
International Sanitary Conferences worked to combat many diseases, chief among them cholera,
yellow fever, and the bubonic plague. The conferences were largely ineffective until the seventh,
in 1892; when an International Sanitary Convention that dealt with cholera was passed. Five
years later, a convention for the plague was signed.[2] In part as a result of the successes of the
Conferences, the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau, and the Office International d'Hygiène Publique
were soon founded in 1902 and 1907, respectively. When the League of Nations was formed in
1920, they established the Health Organization of the League of Nations. After World War II, the
United Nations absorbed all the other health organizations, to form the WHO.[3]

Establishment

During the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, Szeming Sze, a
delegate from China, conferred with Norwegian and Brazilian delegates on creating an
international health organization under the auspices of the new United Nations. After failing to
get 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.[4] The use of
the word "world", rather than "international", emphasized the truly global nature of what the
organization was seeking to achieve.[5] 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.[6] It
thus became the first specialized agency of the United Nations to which every member
subscribed.[7] 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.[6] The first meeting of the World Health
Assembly finished on 24 July 1948, having secured a budget of US$5 million (then GB£1,250,000)
for the 1949 year. Andrija Stampar was the Assembly's first president, and G. Brock Chisholm
was appointed Director-General of WHO, having served as Executive Secretary during the
planning stages.[5] Its first priorities were to control the spread of malaria, tuberculosis and
sexually transmitted infections, and to improve maternal and child health, nutrition and
environmental hygiene.[8] Its first legislative act was concerning the compilation of accurate
statistics on the spread and morbidity of disease.[5] The logo of the World Health Organization
features the Rod of Asclepius as a symbol for healing.[9]

Operational history