WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
WHO was founded in 7th April 1948 with its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. This was after the diplomats met in 1945 to discuss the formation of the United Nations (Brown, 2006). It was then when they discussed the need to form a global health organization. WHO has 194 countries as the international organizations’ members. All the members of the United Nations are members of the World Health Organization except the Cook Islands and Niue. Full membership of the WHO is acquired by fully endorsing the agreement known as the constitution of The World Health Organization. The WHO was created mainly to conduct health activities in the United Nations system. When it was first created the targeted diseases were malaria, venereal diseases tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. It was also aimed at helping women and children and improving nutrition and also cleanliness. The WHO worked with United Nation countries to indicate and solve health issues.
The WHO has a 10year plan to engage for health. The Organization’s future of health is based on the consultative discussions with partners. WHO assesses the world’s health state by using scientific research and analysis and the problems that should be solved. WHO set a goal to lessen the health risks, improve impartiality in health, to support the healthy way of life and respond to the factors of health (Kaul, 2001). WHO has three organs, namely; The World Health Assembly, The Secretariat and the Executive Board. In the World Health Assembly all the members of WHO are represented. Every member of the World Health Assembly has one vote and send three delegates who are to act as advisers. The Executive Board meets twice a year, and its work is to prepare the agenda for the World Health Assembly. The director-general heads the secretariat of the World Health Organization.
WHO has a complex bureaucracy since there is a lack of efficient communication in the system of leadership. This is shown in the Organization’s lack of immediate response when there is a crisis. The body’s bureaucracy is also dysfunctional since the Organization spends more money on travelling than they do on improving health. WHO does its functions as per its constitution. The services are divided into three categories that are the normative functions, research and technical functions and the directing and coordinating functions (Grad, 2002). The primary purpose of the WHO is to direct and coordinate the international health for countries of the United Nation System. It also deals with readiness and responses to the non-communicable and communicable diseases. The WHO has had significant achievements in the health sector. One of the greatest achievement of the WHO is the eradication of the Smallpox in 1977. Despite the considerable threat that the disease had on the lives of the people, WHO managed to eradicate it while being cost-effective. WHO also another great achievement of significantly reducing the number of death of children under five years from 7.6 million in 2010 to 6.6 in 2012 (Beigbeder, 2017). The large decrease was due to research-based on evidence that WHO did on the best practices on how to reduce deaths in children due to pneumonia and diarrhoea. WHO also has an achievement of significantly reducing the number of cases and deaths of malaria. The WHO works to eradicate malaria showed that 50 affected countries were able to eliminate malaria.
References
Beigbeder, Y. (2017). The World Health Organization: Achievements and Failures. Routledge.
Brown, T. M., Cueto, M., & Fee, E. (2006). The World Health Organization and the transition from “international” to “global” public health. American journal of public health, 96(1), 62-72.
Grad, F. P. (2002). The preamble of the constitution of the World Health Organization. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 80, 981-981.
Kaul, I., & Faust, M. (2001). Global public goods and health: taking the agenda forward. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 79, 869-874.