Set up in 1948, the World Health Organisation has grown to more than 7,000 people working in 150 countries.
Its most celebrated success was the eradication of smallpox. The last recorded case was in Somalia in 1977. Infectious diseases have been the priority for most of its history. A huge collaborative effort against polio has rid all but two countries of endemic disease and record numbers of children around the globe are vaccinated against common killers such as diphtheria and rotavirus.
In the 1970s and 80s, it led the global crusade for better understanding and treatment of mental health. At the end of the 1990s, it took on the tobacco industry, leading eventually to the groundbreaking WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control adopted in 2003. Its work has helped bring down child mortality by 53% since 2000, although short of the millennium development goal of two-thirds, and maternal mortality has halved.
But the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone and the other small and impoverished west African states of Guinea and Liberia has shown up the WHO’s inadequacies – its grindingly slow bureaucracy and its deference to political leaders even in the face of an epidemic that knows no national borders.
It is also facing a budget crunch, like many other UN agencies. Over the past 50 years, core funding – the mandatory contributions from all member states that it can use for whatever it thinks fit – has eroded. Its approved programme budget for 2014-15, as of April, was $3.98bn, of which only 23% was automatic contributions from member states. The rest is from voluntary contributions tied to specific projects.
The US government is the biggest voluntary donor, followed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Among the initiatives they fund are polio eradication and malaria and child and maternal mortality programmes.
The WHO employs some dedicated and brilliant people, and much of its work setting standards and advising on subjects ranging from sugar intake to what drugs each country should stock is vital and sound. Most critics agree that the WHO must be the body to lead in improving health worldwide, though calls for reform are mounting.
Now we want to hear from you. If you’ve been involved with the UN in some way, we’d like to hear about your experiences – or if you’d just like to share your views – then please use the form below. We will be using the most interesting contributions in our reporting.
