WHO: World health organization founders, History
WHO origin: World health organization founders, History
World Health Organization (WHO), is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) established in April 7, 1948.
According the WHO, “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.”
WHO Origin: History and establishment
Cholera, remain the disease of major concern for the ISC for most of the 19th century.
A series of International Sanitary Conferences (ISC) were held for many years, in order to reach an agreement on the way to regulate global health issues, like Cholera the deadly diseases that are affecting the nation during that time.
Most of the conferences held to provide an appropriate solution, were difficult to reach convention.
The first conference held in Paris, in 23 June 1851, subsequent conferences held for over 87 years that was from 1851 to 1938.
The first international conferences that resulted in a convention by multi-state international agreement, was the seventh conference took place in Venice in 1892, after seven series of meeting for over 41 years.
The Venice convention in 1892, concerned with the limit spreading of cholera transmission through shipping.
In 1897, another conference resulted in convention signed by sixteen of the 19 states attended the Venice conference to control bubonic plague spread. But Us, Denmark, Sweden-Norway, did not sign this convention.
Many Conferences from 1902 to the final one held in 1938 was successful, that result to widened discussion of the diseases of concern for the ISC, and included discussions about responses to other diseases such yellow fever, brucellosis, leprosy, tuberculosis, and typhoid.
Following the successful conference many Organizations were founded from 1902 to 1920, including the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau (1902), the Office International d’Hygiène Publique (1907) and Health organization of the League of Nations in 1920.
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1945 UN Conference on International Organization
During the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, Szeming Sze was a diplomat for his home country of China with Norwegian and Brazilian delegates, helped build the World Health Organization into a specialized United Nations agency.
They initially suggested the formation of the International Health Organization. The secretary general of the conference, Alger Hiss, support their motion to establish such organization.
Luckily enough, their recommendation was successful resulted in another international conference on health.
The United Nations absorbed the previous founded organizations in to World Health Organization.
The only change made is the use of “world” instead of “international” which emphasize on the actual aim of the organization.
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The world health organization constitution
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. The constitution formally came into force on the first World Health Day on 7 April 1948, when it was ratified by the 26th member state.
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WHO leadership and directors
The first director general of WHO was Canadian physician Brock Chisholm, who served from 1948 to 1953. Other directors general of WHO included physician and former prime minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998–2003), South Korean epidemiologist and public health expert Lee Jong-Wook (2003–06), and Chinese civil servant Margaret Chan (2007–17). Ethiopian public health official Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus became director general of WHO in 2017.
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