World Health Organization

World Health Organization (WHO), specialized organization of the United Nations (UN). Headquartered in Geneva, the WHO was founded in 1948.Its constitution, adopted in 1946 by a UN‐sponsored World Health Assembly, envisioned an ambitious effort to raise health standards worldwide. The WHO's antecedents included a series of international sanitary conferences beginning in 1851; an International Bureau of Public Hygiene created in Paris in 1907; and an International Health Organization established by the League of Nations in 1921. Governed by a World Health Assembly that meets annually, and financed by assessments on member states, the WHO has focused on combating such diseases as poliomyelitis, cholera, leprosy, malaria, and tuberculosis. A global program to combat acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was launched in 1987.

From the beginning, U.S. diplomats and public‐health experts played key roles in planning and implementing the WHO's program. The WHO subsumed tasks earlier performed by other international organizations, including the Washington‐based Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB). With U.S. diplomatic support, the PASB joined the WHO, while preserving its own budget and other autonomous powers. Designated the WHO's “regional office in the Western Hemisphere” in 1949, the PASB was renamed the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

In the spirit of postwar internationalism, Congress in 1948 agreed to underwrite approximately 35 percent of WHO's budget. The organization soon became enmeshed in Cold War politics, however. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower urged support for international health programs because disease contributed to “the spread of communism.” The Soviet Union, for its part, brought such contentious issues as the Vietnam War before the WHO. During intervals of détente, however, the superpowers cooperated on major WHO initiatives. A Soviet proposal for eradicating smallpox, for example, was brought to fruition by epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control, and in 1979 a global commission declared smallpox eradicated. In the later twentieth century, U.S. policy toward the WHO remained ambivalent. While supporting programs to eradicate diseases such as polio, and to reduce infant mortality through immunization, nutritional supplements, and control of diarrheal diseases, Washington balked at diffuse and expensive efforts to transform global health through long‐term infrastructural change. An ambitious WHO program entitled Health for All by the Year 2000 won little support in Washington. Nevertheless, thousands of Americans continued to staff WHO and PAHO programs with passion and commitment.
See also Medicine: Since 1945.

Bibliography

Pan American Health Organization , Pro Salute Novi Mundi: A History of the Pan American Health Organization, 1992.
Javed Siddiqi , World Health and World Politics: The WHO and the UN System, 1995.

Paul R. Greenough