DEPARTMENT OF

HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF
MUMBAI

Name: Neha Rajbhar

Roll: 53
Class: M.A History
Part II Semester: II

Academic Year – 2020-2021

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This assignment would not have been possible without the help of
several individuals, who have contributed and provided their
valuable assistance for the completion of my project. I would like
to express my special thanks to my professor Dr. Manjiri Kamat ,
under her guidance I was able to complete this assignment.
Special appreciation to her who gave me this opportunity to work
on this knowledgeable topic “Role of World Health Organization
”. Due to this pandemic and not being able to access the
University’s library, the process of making this assignment was
truly remarkable as it helped to carry out extensive research to
get the right references needed for my assignment.

I hereby declare that the work presented in this project has been
conducted by me and the observations, analysis and
interpretations made in the study as well as the conclusions
arrived at and included in the assignment are entirely my own.
The work reported in this is original and to the best of my
knowledge, and been submitted to the University of Mumbai.
 INTRODUCTION
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United
Nations responsible for international public health.i The WHO Constitution
states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible
level of health".iiHeadquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it has six regional
offices and 150 field offices worldwide.

The WHO was established on 7 April 1948.iii 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, and duties of
the League of Nations' Health Organization and the Office International
d'Hygiène Publique, including the International Classification of
Diseases (ICD).iv Its work began in earnest in 1951 after a significant infusion
of financial and technical resources.

The WHO's mandate seeks and includes: working 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.v It provides technical assistance to
countries, sets international health standards, and collects data on global health
issues. A publication, the World Health Report, provides assessments of
worldwide health topics. The WHO also serves as a forum for discussions of
health issues.

The WHO has played a leading role in several public health achievements, most
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.
 History Of WHO

Origin

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.vi The first conference, in Paris, was almost solely concerned with cholera,
which would remain 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 difficult 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 control of shipping traversing the Suez Canal,
and was an effort to guard against importation of cholera.vii 
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 not sign this convention, it was
unanimously agreed that the work of the prior conferences should be codified
for implementation.viii Subsequent conferences, from 1902 until the final one in
1938, widened the diseases of concern for the ISC, and included discussions of
responses to yellow fever, brucellosis, leprosy, tuberculosis, and typhoid.
In part as a result of the successes of the Conferences, the Pan-American
Sanitary Bureau (1902), and the Office International d'Hygiène Publique (1907)
were soon founded. 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.ix
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.x
The use of the word "world", rather than "international", emphasized the truly
global nature of what the organization was seeking to achieve.xi 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.Andrija Štampar 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.xiiIts 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.xiii
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
features the Rod of Asclepius as a symbol for healing. The Rod of Asclepius
takes its name from the Greek god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing
and medicinal arts in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Asclepius'
attributes, the snake and the staff, sometimes depicted separately in antiquity,
are combined in this symbol.
When diplomats met to form the United Nations in 1945, one of the things they
discussed was setting up a global health organization. WHO’s Constitution
came into force on 7 April 1948 – a date we now celebrate every year as World
Health Day.
In April 1945, during the Conference to set up the United Nations (UN) held in
San Francisco, representatives of Brazil and China proposed that an
international health organization be established and a conference to frame its
constitution convened. On 15 February 1946, the Economic and Social Council
of the UN instructed the Secretary-General to convoke such a conference.
A Technical Preparatory Committee met in Paris from 18 March to 5 April
1946 and drew up proposals for the Constitution which were presented to the
International Health Conference in New York City between 19 June and 22 July
1946. On the basis of these proposals, the Conference drafted and adopted the
Constitution of the World Health Organization, signed 22 July 1946 by
representatives of 51 Members of the UN and of 10 other nations.
The Conference established also an Interim Commission to carry out certain
activities of the existing health institutions until the entry into force of the
Constitution of the World Health Organization. The preamble and Article 69 of
the Constitution of WHO provide that WHO should be a specialized agency of
the UN.
Article 80 provides that the Constitution would come into force when 26
members of the United Nations had ratified it. The Constitution did not come
into force until 7 April 1948, when the 26th of the 61 governments who had
signed it ratified its signature. The first Health Assembly opened in Geneva on
24 June 1948 with delegations from 53 of the 55 Member States. It decided that
the Interim Commission was to cease to exist at midnight on 31 August 1948, to
be immediately succeeded by WHO.
 The Global Health Histories project was established within the WHO
headquarters in late 2004 and expanded into the regional offices from 2009
onwards. An official WHO activity, its mission is based on the principle that
understanding the history of health, especially during the last 60 years, helps the
global public health community to respond to the challenges of today and help
shape a healthier future for everyone, especially those most in need.

Forming an important part of the project, the Global Health Histories Seminars
are organised with WHO partners around the world, at WHO headquarters,
regional and country offices, as well as with WHO member states and
university partners. Since 2005, the seminars have been generously supported
by the Wellcome Trust.

WHO officials periodically review and update the agency’s leadership

priorities. Over the period 2014–19, WHO’s leadership priorities were aimed at:

1. Assisting countries that seek progress toward universal health coverage

2. Helping countries establish their capacity to adhere to International Health
Regulations
3. Increasing access to essential and high-quality medical products
4. Addressing the role of social, economic, and environmental factors in public
health
5. Coordinating responses to non-communicable diseases
6. Promoting public health and well-being in keeping with the Sustainable
Development Goals, set forth by the UN.

The work encompassed by those priorities is spread across a number of health-

related areas. For example, WHO has established a codified set of international
sanitary regulations designed to standardize quarantine measures without
interfering unnecessarily with trade and air travel across national boundaries.
WHO also keeps member countries informed of the latest developments
in cancer research, drug development, disease prevention, control of drug
addiction, vaccine use, and health hazards of chemicals and other substances.
WHO sponsors measures for the control of epidemic and endemic disease by
promoting mass campaigns involving nationwide vaccination programs,
instruction in the use of antibiotics and insecticides, the improvement of
laboratory and clinical facilities for early diagnosis and prevention, assistance in
providing pure-water supplies and sanitation systems, and health education for
people living in rural communities.

These campaigns have had some success against AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria,
and a variety of other diseases. In May 1980 smallpox was globally eradicated,
a feat largely because of the efforts of WHO. In March 2020 WHO declared the
global outbreak of COVID-19, a severe respiratory illness caused by a
novel coronavirus that first appeared in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, to be
a pandemic. The agency acted as a worldwide information centre on the illness,
providing regular situation reports and media briefings on its spread and
mortality rates; dispensing technical guidance and practical advice for
governments, public health authorities, health care workers, and the public; and
issuing updates of ongoing scientific research.
 WHO CONSTITUTION, CORE FUNCTIONS, AND PROPOSED
REFORMS

The work of the WHO is defined by its Constitution, which divides WHO’s
core functions into three categories: (1) normative functions, including
international conventions and agreements, regulations and non-binding
standards and recommendations; (2) directing and coordinating functions,
including its health for all, poverty and health, and essential medicine activities
and its specific disease programs; (3) research and technical cooperation
functions,xiv including disease eradication and emergencies. Over the past fifty
years or so, the WHO has gone through various permutations in prioritizing
different aspects of these categories over others, and its effectiveness in doing
so has been the subject of analysis and criticism.xv
For example, in one of the most comprehensive analyses of the WHO, Fiona
Godlee critiqued WHO’s management, effectiveness, policy choices,
headquarter-regional negotiations and power struggle, and its weak operational
capacity in a series of articles in the British Medical Journal in the mid-1990s.xvi
At about the same time, a self-study commissioned by the WHO analyzed the
institutions effectiveness in implementing its core functions and recommended
reforms focused especially on strengthening its technical capacity and its global
health and coordinating functions. And in 1996-1997, the WHO Executive
Board held 6 special meetings to review the Constitution, recommending
rewriting WHO’s core functions to emphasize coordination, health policy
development, norms and standards, advocating health for all, and advice and
technical cooperation.xvii
In the late 1990s, a group of international health scholars and practitioners
gathered in Pocantico, New York for a retreat on “Enhancing the Performance
of International Health Institutions” to examine whether the institutional
structure in international health was sufficient for a 21st century of global health
interdependence.
The Pocantico report concluded, “the importance of WHO was seen primarily
for its global normative functions which need to be strengthened and updated,”
that “the emphasis on technical assistance has often come at the expense of the
normative role”, that “WHO should be the ‘normative conscience’ for world
health” and that “WHO should assume leadership in achieving more coherence
and equity in the system.”xviii
 A clear emphasis was placed on WHO’s global, especially normative,
functions. This perspective was reiterated in an article by Jamison, Frenk and
Knaul, who argued that WHO had two separate types of functions: core
(including global normative work) and supplementary (including technical
cooperation). While the demand for both types has increased, the majority of
new global health actors address primarily operational functions, creating an
even greater need for WHO’s core global functions.

CONCLUSION

The global vision that has brought improved travel and trade and increased
interdependency among countries also calls for a common vision of health around
the world. All countries are vulnerable to the ever-present threats of infectious
disease, outbreaks, and epidemics. At the same time, there are opportunities for
shared innovation and universal purpose as many countries that suffer from similar
disease burdens strive to develop best practices and strong health systems for their
citizens.xix
Many countries currently face the dual burden of a rapid increase in NCDs, such as
cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer, and the continuing need to eliminate
infectious diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis (TB), in addition to the
priority of reducing the burden of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS). Moreover, some countries are
considered to bear a triple burden, as traumatic injury has been found to be the
second leading cause of premature death in young men after HIV/AIDS (Marquez
and Farrington, 2013). Combined, these three disease burdens can stall the
progress of a country's development and significantly affect its ability to become a
strong trading partner or a business or travel destination. The cost of productivity
losses associated with disability, unplanned absences, and increased accidents can
be as much as 400 percent higher than the cost of treatment (WEF, 2010).
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
i https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/the-u-s-government-and-the-world-health-organization/

ii http://apps.who.int/gb/bd/pdf_files/BD_49th-en.pdf#page=7

iii https://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_en.pdf

iv http://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/organization/who-at-70/milestones-for-health-over-70-years

v https://www.who.int/about/what-we-do

vi http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf

vii http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf

viii http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf

ix https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12387972

x https://web.archive.org/web/20170101222750/http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/f/findaid/findaid-
idx?c=ascead;cc=ascead;q1=Szeming%20Sze;rgn=main;view=text;didno=US-PPiU-ua90f141

xi

https://web.archive.org/web/20070809031008/http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hist/chronicles/chronicle_1947.pdf

xii https://www.jstor.org/stable/25364565

xiii https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1985854

xiv
Gian Luca Burci and Claude-Henri Vignes, World Health Organization (London, UK: Kluwer
Law International: 2004).

xvGill Walt, “WHO under stress: Implications for health policy,” Health Policy 24, no. 2 (1993):
125-144.

xvi
Fiona Godlee, “WHO in retreat: is it losing its influence,” British Medical Journal 309, no. 6967
(1994): 1491-1495; “WHO in crisis,” British Medical Journal 309, no. 6966 (1994): 1424-1428
and “WHO fellowships – what do they achieve?” British Medical Journal 310, no. 6972 (1995):
110-112.

xvii
WHO, Review of the Constitution and regional arrangements of the World Health
Organization, Report of the special group, Executive Board 101st Session, EB101/7, 1997.
17 Pocantico Retreat, Enhancing the Performance of International Health Institutions, February 1-
3, 1996.

xviii Ibid.

xix

https://brainly.in/question/41907474#:~:text=The%20global%20vision%20that%20has,disease%2C%20outbre
aks%2C%20and%20epidemics.