World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO), (in English: World Health Organization (WHO)) is the UN specialized agency for health. It reports directly to the Economic and Social Council and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, on the common-Pregny Chambésy.
According to its Constitution, WHO aims to bring all peoples of the world at the highest possible health, health being defined in this document as "a state of complete physical, mental and social not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. "
Its current CEO is Dr. Margaret Chan since January 4, 2007.
History
Founded April 7, 1948, O. M.S. was preceded by various international organizations and agreements.
Around 1850 First, various provisions are made to harmonize quarantine measures to protect mainly while the European states against the plague. Beginning in 1851 the international sanitary conferences are struggling to reach agreements. Regarding the plague, cholera and yellow fever, however, the International Sanitary Conventions are signed. In 1907, was created in Paris "International Office of Public Health (OIHP), with a permanent secretariat and a" standing committee ". This committee organizes several conferences, including that of 1926 International Sanitary Convention adopts a container for the first time, provisions relating to smallpox and typhus. At the end of the First World War, the United States objects that the OIHP passes under the control of any new League of Nations (SDN). Until the Second World War, two international health agencies will coexist in Europe, and OIHP Health Organisation of the League of Nations while the other side of the Atlantic, the Pan American Health Organization will be a third international health organization.
The Spanish flu (H1N1) from 1918-1919, which caused 50 million deaths (five times more people than the First World War), pushed the League of Nations (SDN) to create "health committee" of the League, considered the ancestor of the WHO. Dominated by France and the United Kingdom, the Committee covers health surveillance in the late 1920s, 70% of the world.
In the 1980s, O. M.S. experienced some "wilderness" because of questionable choices (almost dismantled the Office of tuberculosis) and the hostility of some countries (USA, United Kingdom) objected to what they saw as a political expensive. Private foundations, as well as the World Bank, were then loaded on global health issues.
Lion Murard speaks however of a "a kind of second birth" of the WHO from 1995. Indeed, the O. M.S. then created the Division of Communicable Diseases (1996), the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (2001) in Geneva responsible for reporting "all events that could lead to public health emergencies of international concern" and not just the occurrence of Quarantine traditional three diseases: plague, yellow fever and cholera, and promulgated a new International Health Regulations (adopted in 2005) that robs governments of their right of veto on the epidemiological information. According to historian Patrick Zylberman, the return of the WHO largely explained by the re-emergence of illnesses such as AIDS, tuberculosis (in 1985-91 in New York), fever (in India in 1994), Ebola (Zaire in 1996) etc... The O. M.S. is launching a global alert on March 12, 2003 travel to Asia and Canada, without prior permission by the State because of the SARS epidemic, and opposes China on statistics and the development of the epidemic.
Due to the sudden death of its director general, Lee Jong-wook, 22 May 2006, the acting head is provided by Anders Nordström, to the election of his successor, Dr Margaret Chan, November 8 2006.
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