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20th Anniversary of WHO

April 7, 1968 marks the 20th anniversary of the World Health Organization (WHO). The creation in 1948 of this organization resulted from the wars that marked the end of the 19th century, notably the Mexican-American War and the Crimean War. After the First World War, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919 caused, in the space of six months, the deaths of more than twenty million people around the world. This pushed the League of Nations (an organization created in 1920 in Geneva to maintain world peace) to create a Health Committee, replaced by the WHO after the dissolution of the League of Nations in 1946. Reporting directly to the UN Economic and Social Council, the World Health Organization, and according to its constitution, must “act as the directing and coordinating authority for health at the international level” and ensure that all people achieve the “highest possible level of health”. The constitutive document further defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Led by the 193 Member States meeting at the World Health Assembly and composed of delegates representing Member States, among the main functions of the Organization are the approval of the WHO program and budget for the biennium and the deliberation on the political directions of the Organization. In addition to offering advice and technical services, such as the training of health professionals, the organization also finances care centers in which new technologies are applied. All this with the major concern of changing the conditions of human health throughout the world.