The World Health Organization
“As to diseases, make a habit of two things – to help, or at least, to do no harm.” Hippocrates, the noted philosopher, acknowledges that for one to achieve wellness in himself or promote it in others, actions must be taken; however they must be the right actions. On a global scale, there is not a soul who can go through life without having disease or sickness encroach upon them in some shape or form. Since humans roamed the earth, they have been at war with disease and sickness and have had to display some ingenuity on how to combat this problem. First, comes the issue of identifying what the disease is intrinsically; its symptoms, causes, etc. After the preliminary work is done, the next step is to work towards a cure or remedy as a solution to the newly identified problem. Since this is not a simple, cut and dry process, there needs to be some sort of rhythm and rhyme to the decisions that are made regarding how to implement and decide upon whatever actions are necessary to combat current or potential health threats. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been played a pivotal and vital role in promoting and maintaining a healthier global agenda among its inhabitants. By providing leadership on global health matters among many other duties including but not limited to the implementation of strategic health promoting missions around the globe, the World Health Organization has cemented itself as one of the most important and productive international organizations that the world possesses today.
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There are nine private payer plans which include preferred provider organizations (PPO), health maintenance organizations (HMO), point of service (POS). Indemnity plans cost the most for employees and they usually have to choose a PPO plan. The new consumer driven health plan (CDHP) which a lot of people are picking, it has a high deductible combined with a funding option of some type. All of the ...
Begat from a previous organization within the later defunct League of Nations, the WHO derives many of its ideals from this prior collective. The League of Nations Health Organization was created following the conclusion of World War I as a way to come up with a battle strategy regarding the epidemics of typhus, cholera, and relapsing fever, which had spread from Russia to the countries of Eastern Europe. That organization, assembled somewhat hastily, consisted of multiple arms: A Health Committee of about twenty members who would meet twice a year, an Advisory Council, and the executive organ-the Health Section.1 It is important to note that the Health Organization was strictly non-political. When tackling a certain issue, the organization would typically summon a committee of experts to come up with a report covering what the problem is and how it may be solved. In the next step, the reports are shuttled along to a myriad of scientific institutions where the report is altered, should they deem it necessary. The final step of the process was to present the joint report to a final panel consisting of each arm of the organization, whose job was then to enact the proposed solution with the backing of the League of Nations. The Health Organization was effectively shutdown due to the outbreak of World War II. Following the war, the newly minted United Nations looked to implement a new body to oversee global health issues.
The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations was responsible for coming up with the new organization’s constitution and begin drafting it in early 1946.2 By the summer of 1946, the constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO), had been signed off on by each of the 61 countries part of the United Nations at the time. This was the first time that a newly formed United Nations agency garnered the subscription of each of its constituents.3 According to the “Chronicle of the World Health Organization, 1947,” the constitution was enacted on the first World Health Day, held on April 7, 1948 in Geneva, Switzerland, when the 26th member state of the United Nations ratified the document. 4 With the implementation of a new, centralized organization to head the mission for a healthier population, the horizon appeared to be very promising for the world as a whole.
The Term Paper on World Health Organization
1) According to the World Health Organization (WHO), how could at least half a million deaths due to surgical error be prevented every year? Your Answer:b) By implementing systemic changes in operating rooms Correct Answer:b) By implementing systemic changes in operating rooms At least half a million deaths per year could be prevented with effective implementation of systemic improvements in ...
The WHO consists of 194 member states, which have either accepted its Constitution or have been admitted via a vote.5 At the head of the WHO, is the World Health Assembly, which is headed by an Executive Board. Members of the WHO are responsible for appointing parties to the Assembly. The Assembly then elects 34 well-qualified members to its Executive Board, each of which is holds the position for 3 years The main functions of the Board are to give effect to the decisions and policies of the Health Assembly, to advise it and generally to facilitate its work. 6 As the supreme entity of the WHO, the World Health Assembly retains its headquarters in Geneva, and meets on a yearly basis unless situations arise that make it necessary to hold additional conventions. The primary duties of the Assembly are to arrive at solutions for questions of financial and policy issues of the WHO. This makes for a streamlined process for coming to decisions regarding important matters, as there are not necessarily a plethora of channels and hoops one has to jump through to get something done.
As far as personnel are concerned, the WHO is headed up by an appointed candidate, dubbed the “Director-General.” The Director-General is nominated and instated by the members of the World Health Assembly by way of majority vote. The Director-General oversees all other directors and persons within the organization. The current title holder of Director-General is Dr. Margaret Chan, and was elected to the position in November 2006, and then nominated for re-election which, should she be confirmed by the Assembly, will assume a second term that will run through June 2017.7
Scattered across the globe are the 6 regional offices of the WHO. These are located in the Congo, USA, Denmark, Egypt, India, and the Philippines; representing Africa, the Americas, Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, South East Asia, and the Western Pacific respectively. A Regional Director, who is elected by the Regional Committee, oversees each Regional Office.9 The regional director, once elected, serves a 5-year term. These regions were created in a span of 4 years, 1949 through 1952. There were numerous reasons for the dissection of the globe into 6 specific regions. It did however, allow the Assembly to “establish a [single] regional organization to meet the specific needs of [each defined] area.”9
The Business plan on Accounts Receivable Management In Health Care Organizations
To increase profit in health care organizations, most companies usually allow the services to be done on credit. There were allowed with the high expectation that customer would pay incurred amount in due time. But there were also times when customers would not pay on time or not be able to pay at all, the expenses then would fall into the uncollectible accounts, or bad debts, and are a loss or an ...
Maintaining a highly diverse workplace is a goal that the WHO has strived to meet. It accomplished this by employing about 8,500 people, hailing from more than 150 nationalities and working in 147 different countries.7 On a more interesting note, because of its interests in a tobacco-free workplace, the WHO does not employ tobacco users.8 A person is only able to apply for a General Service Staff position, as the Director and Professional staffers are recruited and appointed by the organization itself.
The WHO is such a large organization encompassing many different facets of public health. However, on its own website, the WHO enumerates 6 main agenda points and they are as follows:10
1) Promoting Development
2) Fostering Health Security
3) Strengthening Health Systems
4) Harnessing Research, Information and Evidence
5) Enhancing Partnerships
6) Improving Performance
The WHO sees these 6 points as key to responding successfully to the challenges regarding public health. These points are further segregated, as the first two tackle health objectives, the next dealing with strategic needs, and the final two, addressing operational approaches.
According to the organization, the cornerstones of the health and development agenda are the health-related Millennium Development Goals (as prescribed by the United Nations), preventing and treating chronic diseases and addressing the neglected tropical diseases. It acknowledges that one of the largest health related security risks stems from epidemic-prone diseases, and it must continue to search for ways to combat these.10
There are many desirable goals out there that the WHO would love to go after, however, it has nominated two specific missions as the most strategic. To reduce poverty via a health improvement plan, the organization concluded that health services must be maid attainable to the poverty stricken. The fact that a high number of places in the world cannot provide for these people has propelled this issue of strengthening health systems worldwide, of the utmost importance for the WHO. In what may be considered an obvious strategy, the WHO places a high priority on furthering the way in which health related research is completed, and always searching for improvements in the way the data and evidence discovered is evaluated and implemented. By occupying the role of the authoritative source on health information, the WHO needs to continually enlist the assistance of leading experts in a multitude of fields and continually search for fresh avenues of garnering and processing information relevant to improving health conditions worldwide.10
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... will help people gained more knowledge about health, disease, and prevention. It will enhance their ... is relevant for the organizational goals: “Performance is what the organization hires one to do, and ... urgency of the One Million Community Health Workers Campaign (MDG Health Alliance, 2013). The new report ... another “band-aid solution”. He explained that CHBPs give primacy to the organization of the ...
The enormity of the problems faced by the WHO are matched by very few. Therefore, to successfully complete its missions and make a difference in the world, the organization must procure the aid of and collaborate with many different partners, “including UN agencies and other international organizations, donors, civil society and the private sector”10 to complete its goals. Lastly, the WHO is aware that it needs to make sure that the organization itself is thriving and operating at its full potential. To ensure this, the “WHO plans its budget and activities through results-based management, with clear expected results to measure performance at country, regional and international levels.”10 By placing this much importance on guaranteeing a high morale among its employees, it is in essence, guaranteeing better results and increased production.
There are many different ways to gauge success. The WHO tries to quantify its success in terms of the amount of people it has helped with its endeavors. Perhaps one of its biggest success stories comes from the eradication of the smallpox disease. Smallpox was an endemic in 31 countries in the year 1967 and the WHO estimated that 15 million people had died from the disease in that year alone.11 There was no effective treatment for the disease and killed as many as 30% of those infected. 11 Those that escaped fatality from the disease were left with permanent scars or rendered blind by it. In 1967, the WHO initiated a high priority mission to rid the world of the long-destructive disease. Approaching the problem on a regional front to begin, the WHO identified the disease’s birthplace, the lower Indian region, as the top priority for the Smallpox Eradication Program. They believed if they were to successfully rid this area of the disease, they would in effect, be lopping off the head of the problem. Through the use of many different scientists and experts in the field, the WHO worked diligently and eventually had a vaccine potent and stable enough to effectively prevent the spread of the disease.
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Economic development, education, food security, and access to health care and immunization programs in developed countries have resulted in dramatic decreases in undernutrition-related diseases. Unfortunately, many of these factors have also led to unhealthy behaviors, inappropriate diets, and lack of physical activity, which has exacerbated the development of chronic diseases, also known as ...
Instead of following a previously failed method of mass vaccination as a means to combat the disease, the WHO opted for a more preeminent approach. By implementing a practice of identification, quarantine, and containment by way of vaccination, the amount of smallpox cases began to dwindle. To identify new cases of the disease that would pop up, the WHO incentivized the locals by offering them rewards for tipping them off to new cases rather than the WHO having to keep conducting house searches. 10 years later in 1976, “by systematically applying these strategies, and by dint of a great deal of hard work and some good luck, smallpox was progressively eliminated from each of the countries in which it had been endemic in 1967.”12 Officially, on December 9, 1979, the Global Commission for the Eradication of Smallpox accepted the final report on the issue and declared smallpox successfully eradicated.
Another early disease to garner the attention of the WHO was “yaws,” a tropical, bacterial infection of the skin and bones that leaves the victim grotesquely disfigured if left untreated. Yaws is relatively to treat, as it is cured with a single, properly administered injection of penicillin. However, the problem for most was accessibility. In those days, penicillin was not as widely available as it is in the present day. WHO made it a priority to provide treatment to areas that would otherwise go without and implemented a plan to bestow copious amounts of medicine around the world. When all was said and done, the WHO effectively aided in treating 46 million yaws patients in 49 different countries.13
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One of the more troubling statistics that caught the eye of the WHO was that the mortality rate in 1970 for live births was 134 out of 1000.13 Realizing that there was a direct correlation between these numbers and several socio-economic factors, the organization set out to do what it could to aid these regions lacking in proper healthcare. By proposing, accepting, and implementing a plan that brought a higher standard of healthcare to those who previously went without, along with the medicinal supplies necessary, and improving the overall living conditions of the downtrodden, the WHO managed to drop the mortality rate to 57 in 2001, decreasing it by over 50% over a period of 30 years.14 The WHO counts many other successes, which in their eyes are no less significant than the next such as, the distribution of sharps boxes for used syringes, proper waste disposal, successfully creating and monitoring the systems for adverse events following immunization, an increase in the use of auto-disable syringes, increasing life expectancy, delivering essential drugs, introducing environmental sanitation measures, and providing guidelines for healthier cities.13,15 With successes such as these, the WHO has met and then exceeded its initial goals that they deemed realistic at its inception and appears to be poised to continue that trend upwards.
Looking forward, the UN has laid out 7 specific Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the WHO will work towards addressing and achieving by the year 2015. The 7 are as follows:
– MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
– MDG 2: Primary education
– MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
– MDG 4: Reduce child mortality
– MDG 5: Improve maternal health
– MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
– MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
– MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development
Three of these MDGs relate directly to health, MDGs 4, 5, and 6. The specific mission of MDG 4 is to reduce child mortality by two thirds. MDG 5 aims to reduce maternal deaths by three quarters and achieve universal access to reproductive health. Lastly, MDG 6’s goal are to halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, achieve universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS by 2010, and halt and reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.16
Though not pointedly related to health, the other MDGs do in fact, have an indirect influence on matters of health. MDG 1 has a target of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. MDG 7 includes a target of halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. MDG 8 has a target to provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries. Primary education (MDG 2) and empowering women (MDG 3) also lead to health gains.16
As far as which MDGs possess the highest priority tag, the WHO has acknowledged that the focal point of the effort to complete the MDGs are women and children. More specifically, the rate of maternal and newborn mortalities must be diminished significantly and with haste. However, with the biggest priority comes the largest obstacle, as ensuring safer childbirth remains the greatest challenge lying ahead. The problem that is hindering the organization in their efforts is the limited capacity of the health care delivery systems. Without a way to get the aid to where it needs to be in an expedited manner, it inherently slows down the progress of the mission. That being said, a concerted effort among the WHO and its partners is needed to strengthen health systems as well as attend to the broader social and economic determinants of the health of women and children. Although not specifically intended to do so, the continued investment in the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, neglected tropical diseases and noncommunicable diseases is important in its own right and is correlated to the improvement the health of women and children.16
In order for the WHO to continue to prosper in the realm of improving global health and complete the missions the UN has laid out, it must obtain adequate funding. The financing for the WHO is derived from contributions from its member states as well as donations from outside sources. As of 2012, the largest financial contributors to the WHO are the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France; in decreasing order of monetary contributions.17 The WHO plans to implement a budget of $3959 million US dollar for the 2012-2013 year, as outlined in the “Programme Budget 2012-2013.”18 Unfortunately, this number is less than the prior year’s budget. It is important for the WHO to maintain relationships with other NGOs and private partners so that they may receive financial aid from them as well. A total of 473 different NGOs were partners in some way, shape, or form as of 2002. Other notable partners consist of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The donations must keep flowing from as many potential fiscal tributaries as possible if the organization wants to put its budget on the upswing, thus enabling it to complete more tasks with quicker results.
Despite not holding the role of a political group in and of itself, the WHO is a main player in international world politics. Existing in a time of globalization, the health side of the movement has permeated the list of priorities of politicians across the globe as they realize its importance not only in the health sector, but in others as well. “Further, all countries benefit from international norms and standards and sustained global advocacy for health. Outside the health sector the benefits of globalization range from progress on gender empowerment and human rights to better prospects for trade, information technology, and economic growth.”19 While globalization has made proper healthcare and information available to a broader audience, it also has its drawbacks on the health front. Globalization has also accelerated the spread of infectious diseases, as evidenced by the rapid outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), exacerbated existing health inequalities between and within countries, and been associated with global marketing of unhealthy consumption patterns. Thus, the primary challenge with twentieth century globalization relates to global inequalities and externalities, in terms of not just health, but other economic and social indicators as well.19 Thus, the impetus for a leader to promote a strong health sector within its own region is heightened as globalization and its negative externalities have made it necessary to do so.
The WHO is no longer sequestered by itself as the sole actor in global health related decisions. In recent times, a new international health framework has emerged, in which the WHO has been acting in conjunction with numerous other players that have financial or political interests in their matters. No longer are health debates strictly partitioned to their own corner of the room, rather now are regular attendees and speaking points of G8 summits and other important meetings. As a direct result from the increased political interest in the health sector, the WHO has steadily enjoyed increased funding from parties that would have in the past, been largely uninterested in financing their health-centered agenda. In order to continue reaping the benefits of the relationship it currently possesses with political and financial organizations, the WHO must stay steadfast in “engage[ing] in the global health arena with a stronger hold on its role in integrating, coordinating and convening the global health agenda,”19 according to Ruger and Yach’s analysis on “The Global Role of the World Health Organization.” By continuing to build upon its prior successes facilitating a focus on health in trade debates, human rights contexts, public-private partnerships, and treaty revisions and interpretations, the WHO will continue to prosper and remain a major player in the realm of international politics.
Perhaps the time period when the expertise of the WHO is most needed, arrives in times of dire economic crises. In times of severe recessions, depressions, or other economic downturns, the general health of the afflicted population begins to dwindle. Not only can this be attributed to the obvious reasoning whereas the ill person now has fewer funds to spend on healthcare services, but a downturn in the economy effectively handcuffs the healthcare service industry as well. In short, the sick can not afford to pay for the medical supplies they need to heal and the healthcare services can not afford to treat them when the economy takes a dip. In recent times, countries experiencing such crises have acknowledged the importance of keeping the healthcare of its people intact and accessible, despite the economy surrounding it.
The three theoretical schools of thought in the field of international relations, realism, liberalism, and constructivism, all share different thought processes on the ways in which the organization is groomed and what endeavors it should elect to undertake. Realists tend to view international organizations as little more than tentacles of a state, being used to further its own interests. With the mindset of “it’s every man for himself,” realists argue that the WHO can, and is being used by member states to further their own agendas. Should another country be affected by some health related crisis, it is feasible that the realist would attempt to exploit this opportunity for its own gain, attempting to manipulate the WHO to carry out its bidding.
Perhaps the group who perhaps best utilizes the WHO in regards to the original intent of the organization would be liberals. Liberals view international organizations as framework for more cooperative world politics, and believe that when there is amicable coordination amongst the top levels of government, the world is much better off. Since the inception of the liberalist theory, it “has been characterized by trying to increase personal, civil, social, and economic liberty of the individual.”20 The WHO provides avenues for the improved quality of life among individuals everywhere, so liberals are generally in favor of using and supporting the WHO in its endeavors as both parties’ goals run somewhat parallel to each other.
One of the more relatively new ideas to permeate the sphere of international relations is the theory of constructivism. A constructivist by definition aims to delineate just how many different aspects of international relations actually exist and that rather than subscribe to a realism approach whereas human nature is highlighted as the driving force behind decision making, instead it is the shared ideas of people that determine what their interests will be. Applying this approach to the WHO, in a time of great need, a constructivist would, more likely than not, advocate the intervention by the WHO as a means of uniting cultures across the world, emphasizing along the way that because we as a people, share the planet and therefore a moral obligation to each other.
As delineated by its multitude successes, increased membership, continued funding, and increased role in the realm of international world politics, it would appear as if the WHO is not only here to stay, but moreover, increasing in importance and power. One would be hard-pressed to ignore even just the statistical amount of good the organization has accomplished over the years, pointing to the smallpox and yaws eradication as prime examples of what it can do when properly mobilized. The fact that it has garnered continuous and copious amounts of funding from non-governmental organizations testifies to the success that the WHO has had. As long as the funding continues to be funneled into the correct projects, the cycle will continue, and the organization will grow and prosper further. Perhaps one of the most tell-tale signs that the WHO is an organization that is blooming in the sphere of international world politics as it is now a regular member at G8 summits and is consulted on many of the UN’s decisions regardless of whether or not it directly correlates to the health sector. Hippocrates would certainly me proud of the way in which the WHO was founded upon principles of helping others on a health level, and has subsequently flourished, providing aid to those who would otherwise go without and thus becoming a major player in the realm of international relations.
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