Introduction
The World Health Organization - in short the WHO - was born on April 7, 1948. The idea of establishing a global health organization started in 1945, when diplomats met each other to form the United Nations (WHO, 2015). On July 22, 1946, representatives from the countries consisting of the nascent United Nations met to confirm the establishment of the World Health Organization. The formal launch of the World Health Organization took place on July 24, 1948, in Geneva, Switzerland (Markel, 2013). Thomas Parran, a primary architect in the constitution of the World Health Organization stated: “The World Health Organization is a collective instrument which will promote physical and mental vigour, prevent and control disease, expand scientific …show more content…
These sanitary regulations are a set of rules that since 1892 had not been revised. The new regulations were based on infectious diseases control and modern scientific knowledge, but the adopted framework was a construct of quarantine, isolation of the ill, and medical inspection of the late 19th century (Markel 2013). The smallpox eradication program of the WHO, which was fully achieved in 1980, is one of the biggest infection control successes. Nevertheless, in the 1970s, a number of complaints about the WHO occurred. The focus of the WHO was being criticized by international health experts, who argued that the focus on infection control is at the expense of approaches for improving clean water, the basic standard of living, access to food, and health care among the poorest countries in the world (Markel …show more content…
His major focus was on the ‘Three by Five Initiative’. The aim of this initiative was to ensure that three million people would receive AIDS treatment by the end of 2005. Although, the initiative did not reach its goal until 2007, it has been credited with energizing the global effort to provide access to AIDS treatment, and to achieving universal access to such a treatment. However, the initiative also showed the challenges of the WHO to operate in a more complex and crowded global health architecture. Outside of the WHO’s sphere of influence, a huge amount of new money came available for global health programmes (Liden 2014). As a consequence, as stated in Liden (2014, p.145): “WHO’s voice became less one of unquestioned authority but increasingly only one of several opinions”. Nevertheless, some noteworthy initiatives have been undertaken by the WHO to address the challenges in global health. For example, the Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, and most recent a goal of Universal Health Coverage, which replace the expired Millennium Development Goals. Despite this, critics keep saying that the WHO has lost its way and is staggering around in the dark, out of ideas and clarity of purpose (Liden