From laboratories to battlefields, the UN’s specialized health agency has been dedicated to the well-being of all people since 1948. It is guided by science and supported by its 194 member nations, including the United States, a co-founder who on Monday announced plans to withdraw.
What has WHO done for the world? The short answer is – a lot. The UN agency currently works with its membership and on the health front in more than 150 locations and has achieved many public health milestones.
WHO and partners are delivering COVID-19 and other vaccines to remote communities, including in Kuvamiti in the Solomon Islands. (file)
Here’s what you need to know about the largest health body on the planet:
Dealing with emergencies
Amidst crises, conflicts, the continuing threat of disease outbreaks and climate change, WHO has responded, from wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine to ensuring that life-saving vaccines and medical supplies arrive in remote or dangerous areas.
With healthcare facing unprecedented risks, in 2023 WHO documented over 1,200 attacks affecting workers, patients, hospitals, clinics and ambulances in 19 countries and territories, resulting in over 700 deaths and nearly 1,200 injuries.
Indeed, WHO teams often go where others do not. They routinely evacuate injured patients and deliver life-saving equipment, supplies and services in conflict- or disaster-torn areas.
Watch below as WHO teams helped roll out a multi-agency polio vaccination campaign in war-torn besieged Gaza in September 2024 as the fast-spreading virus re-emerged 25 years after it was eradicated:
Tracking and handling health crises
Every day and throughout the night, teams of WHO experts sift through thousands of pieces of information, including scientific articles and disease surveillance reports, scanning for signals of disease outbreaks or other threats to public health, from bird flu to COVID-19.
WHO is mobilizing to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks while strengthening access to essential health services.
It includes strengthening the hospital’s capacity to do everything from delivering new babies to treating war injuries and training health workers.
A laboratory researcher works at a WHO Collaborating Research Center in Thailand. (file)
Elimination of diseases around the world
A wide range of diseases and conditions are ripe for elimination given the right public health policies, including neglected infectious and vector-borne diseases, sexually transmitted infections, diseases transmitted from mother to child, and those that vaccines can prevent.
The UN health agency provides essential medicines and medical equipment while working to enable – and where possible, strengthen – laboratory capacity to diagnose diseases.
By 2024, WHO Member States achieved several milestones in addressing these major global health challenges. Seven countries (Brazil, Chad, India, Jordan, Pakistan, Timor-Leste and Vietnam) eliminated a number of tropical diseases, including leprosy and trachoma.
Mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis has been eliminated in Belize, Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Namibia reached an important milestone towards the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and hepatitis B.
WHO has also played a key role in the past seven decades, including eradicating smallpox in 1980, achieving near-eradication of polio and providing life-saving aid in Gaza during the recent war.
A WHO mobile clinic provides services in Duhok, Iraq. (file)
AI and digital health
WHO is embracing new frontiers, including artificial intelligence (AI), in digital health.
As the impact of new AI technologies continues to grow, WHO is working to ensure its safety and effectiveness for health.
It includes new guidance published last October listing key regulatory considerations on such issues as harnessing AI’s potential to treat or detect conditions such as cancer or tuberculosis, while addressing risks such as unethical data collection, cyber security threats and amplification of bias or misinformation is minimized.
In Singapore, digital devices help patients reach their healthcare providers. (file)
Addressing a deadly climate-related health crisis
The climate-related health crisis affects at least 3.5 billion people – nearly half of the world’s population.
Extreme heat, weather events and air pollution caused millions of deaths by 2023, putting enormous pressure on health systems and the working population, from current wildfires burning across the US West Coast to deadly floods in Indonesia.
An Ebola virus survivor in the Democratic Republic of Congo gets his eyes checked at a WHO-supported eye clinic in North Kivu. (file)
Part of WHO’s response has been to protect health from the wide range of impacts of climate change, which includes assessing vulnerabilities and developing plans.
The UN agency has also worked to implement response systems for key risks such as extreme heat and infectious diseases and support resilience and adaptation in health-critical sectors such as water and food.
What is WHO working on now?
WHO is leading the push for a global treaty, taking a further, deeper step to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, much in line with the founders of the International Sanitary Conference of 1851.
The UN agency is also currently working towards its “triple billion goals”.
The goals are set in 2019 that by 2025, one billion more people will enjoy universal health coverage, one billion more people will be better protected from health emergencies, and one billion more people will enjoy better health and well-being.
Who leads the WHO?
The management is truly international.
Based in Geneva, the UN agency is headed by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The current approved two-year program budget for 2024-2025 is $6.83 billion, which comes from member assessments along with voluntary contributions.
WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly, consists of its member nations, which meet annually to agree on WHO’s priorities and policies.
Members decide on health goals and strategies that will guide their own public health work and the work of the WHO Secretariat to move the world towards better health and well-being for all. It includes the implementation of reform measures that have made WHO more effective.
