The World Health Organization is an international organization under the United Nations who direct and coordinate international health. This organization came to be on April 7th, 1948 which is now known as World Health Day. They have now become an organization with over 7,000 people working in 150 countries, in six regional offices with the headquarters located in Geneva. All decisions for the WHO are made by the World Health Assembly. Each year, this group of delegates from 194 states around the world meet up in their headquarters and discuss on the best policies WHO has to offer. The inputs of all these membered states is crucial to the policies because of their varying backgrounds in their respective countries. Having their perspective on what goes on in their side of the world allows the WHO to effectively determine the course of actions needed to be taken to efficiently attack the problem at the root.
The WHO focuses on six main areas of work which include health systems, non-communicable as well as communicable diseases, promoting health through the life course, corporate services and preparedness, surveillance and response. It is not easy to work flawlessly within those areas of work but they have a system which helps them move forward with minimal road blocks. The steps they take to ensure everything flows smoothly are:.
• providing leadership or even engaging in partnership where needed in critical matters of health .
• creating an outlook of a research that stimulates and enables minds to give valuable information for any particular subject at hand.
• setting norms and standards and promoting and monitoring their implementation.
• articulating ethical and evidence-based policy options.
• giving a helping hand where technical support is needed and facilitating quicker change and building sustainable institutional capacity.
• keeping a watching eye on current issues and trends in health.
