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The Global Guardian of Public Health WHO at a Glance

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The Global Guardian of Public Health WHO at a Glance The Global Guardian of Public Health WHO at a glance >194 Member States >More than 700 institutions supporting >Headquarters in Geneva WHO’s work >6 regional offices > Close partnerships with UN agencies, >More than 150 country offices donors, foundations, academia, >More than 7000 staff nongovernmental organizations and the private sector • Copenhagen Geneva • Washington DC • Cairo • New Delhi •Manila • Brazzaville Region of the Americas • Regional office African Region Headquarters European Region Eastern Mediterranean Region South-East Asia Region Western Pacific Region The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the World Health Organization concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Maps represent approximate border lines for which there may not yet be full agreement. © WHO 2016. All rights reserved. The Global Guardian of Public Health Our goal at the World Health Organization (WHO) is to build Who pays for WHO? a better, healthier future for people all over the world. Working through offices in more than 150 countries, WHO Secretariat WHO is financed in part by dues paid by Member States. The amount each Member staff work side by side with governments and other partners to State must pay is calculated relative to the ensure the highest attainable level of health for all people. country’s wealth and population. Additional financing comes from voluntary Together we strive to combat diseases – infectious diseases like contributions which, in recent years, have influenza and HIV and noncommunicable ones like cancer and accounted for more than three-quarters heart disease. We help mothers and children survive and thrive of the Organization’s financing. Voluntary so they can look forward to a healthy old age. We ensure the contributions come from Member States and partner organizations such as safety of the air people breathe, the food they eat, the water they foundations and civil society. Contributions drink – and the medicines and vaccines they need. from the private sector, usually in the form of in-kind donations, provide less than 1% WHO keeps a close eye on health trends, looking out for new of WHO’s financing. threats and for new opportunities to improve public health. We gather the world’s top experts to examine critical health issues, define the best solutions and deliver and implement the strongest recommendations. We help countries prepare for emergencies and act when they strike. Underpinning all we do, is a shared effort to build strong health systems and achieve universal health coverage. Assessed contributions from Member States Because at WHO, we believe that no one should miss out on the Voluntary contributions from opportunity to live a healthy life. Member States and partners Contributions from private sector WHO | The Global Guardian of Public Health 1 Our priorities WHO has been at the forefront of improving health around the world since its founding in 1948. Because the challenges confronting public health are continually changing, we must be constantly ready to evolve to meet new demands, and adapt the ways we go about our work. In recent years, WHO has undergone a profound reform process. Our aim: an organization that pursues a higher degree of excellence, contributes to greater coherence in global health and, most important of all, achieves better health outcomes. WHO has six leadership priorities. Progress on these priorities will accelerate progress towards the new Sustainable Development Goal for health: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. Advancing universal health Achieving health-related Addressing the challenge of coverage: enabling countries development goals: addressing noncommunicable diseases to sustain or expand access unfinished and future challenges and mental health, violence and to all needed health services relating to maternal and child injuries and disabilities. and financial protection, health; combating HIV, malaria, WHO oversees a global framework and promoting universal TB, and completing the to track progress in preventing and health coverage. eradication of polio controlling major noncommunicable WHO works with governments to and a number of neglected diseases (NCDs). We strive to help promote universal health coverage to tropical diseases. countries reduce the health impacts ensure that all people receive the health WHO Member States are in the process of the toll of tobacco use, harmful services they need without suffering of approving a series of new global use of alcohol, sedentary lifestyles financial hardship when paying for strategies and targets, based on the and unhealthy diets. We also work to them. We are responding to a best evidence available. The Secretariat improve access to services to control groundswell of demand from countries is working alongside governments and treat NCDs. seeking practical advice on how to and other partners to implement these tailor this to their own national strategies and meet the new targets. circumstances. One key focus is on integrating health services, and on meeting the growing desire for services that address the needs of individuals, as well as improving efficiency and value for money. 2 WHO | The Global Guardian of Public Health Ensuring that all countries can Increasing access to quality, Addressing the social, economic detect and respond to acute safe, efficacious and affordable and environmental determinants public health threats under the medical products (medicines, of health as a means to promote International Health Regulations. vaccines, diagnostics and other health outcomes and reduce WHO supports countries to prepare health technologies). health inequalities within and for and respond to all kinds of health We promote rational procurement and between countries. emergencies, including disease prescribing of medicines, and work This area includes our work on outbreaks and humanitarian crises. to improve access to safe, quality, social health protection, disaster When countries don’t have the affordable and efficacious medicines, preparedness, setting standards in resources to deal effectively with an including through the promotion of relation to environmental hazards, emergency on their own, WHO works generics. Our emphasis on innovation is climate change, energy and with governments and partners to matched by the measures we are taking transportation policy, food safety, coordinate the international health to prevent the further development and nutrition, access to clean water and response including overseeing joint spread of antimicrobial resistance. sanitation and many others. We also operational planning, developing seek to increase equity both in access evidence-based guidance, managing to health services and in improved and supporting field operations and health outcomes. monitoring and communicating risks. And when the emergency is over, WHO helps countries to recover and rebuild their health systems, and better respond to future health emergencies. WHO | The Global Guardian of Public Health 3 q r WHO/Philippe Metois WHO/Melissa Winkler w t City of Seinäjoki, Finland WHO/David Orr e y 4 WHO | The Global Guardian of Public Health WHO Syria//Karam Al-Masri Stories from our six Regions VTUANUA PERU INDIA Moving towards Feeding babies Polio free an end to yaws what’s best From the time the first vaccine against Yaws is a contagious infection WHO promotes breastfeeding as the polio was introduced in the 1950s, transmitted by skin contact that best source of nourishment for babies elimination of this crippling disease has leads to disfigurement and disability, and one of the most effective ways been one of WHO’s greatest aspirations. especially in children. The disease was to ensure child health and survival. India brought this goal closer to once widespread in tropical countries. Yet worldwide, only 38% of babies realization when the country was Campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s, are breastfed as their sole source certified as being no longer endemic in which yaws was treated with one of nourishment for 6 months, as for polio (meaning the country had no shot of penicillin, led to a 95% decline WHO recommends. Peru has been a transmission of wild poliovirus within worldwide. Half a century later yaws pathfinder. The proportion of infants its borders) in 2012. India was once made a comeback, including in Vanuatu. exclusively breastfed increased from recognized as the world’s epicentre of A 2011 WHO-supported survey one in five in 1992 to more than half in polio. Today only a few countries remain revealed an urgent need for renewed 2000 – thanks to a nationwide effort to polio-endemic - a historical low. action and that the Tafea province was implement an initiative sponsored by especially hard hit. In 2013 Vanuatu’s WHO and UNICEF. Ministry of Health, assisted by WHO, reached 96% of Tafea’s population with SYRIAN ARAb REPUblIC needed treatment. Addressing lIbERIA mental illness Rebuilding In conflict-torn Syria, as in all countries health systems affected by humanitarian crises, the toll FINlAND liberia, one of the countries hardest of mental illness has risen steadily. Since Reducing hit by the Ebola outbreak that began 2013 WHO has worked closely with childhood obesity in 2014, already faced challenges in Syrian health authorities to train health Overweight children are likely
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