Introduction
This topic covers international collaboration for global public health: its history, the creation, structure, management and strategies of the World Health Organization (WHO), and WHO programmes and priorities.
International health cooperation
- Public health is the health of the population living within the borders of one country. International collaboration involves neighbouring and world nations that come together to protect and improve the health of their population and prevent conditions from worsening.
- People have always been interested in how to prevent diseases such as epidemics; huge epidemics of e.g. cholera and plague occurred in the past.
- One of the first organised, legal, formal ways to manage public health was in the Venetian Republic in 1348: a Quarantine Council monitored all ships trying to enter the national port; they stayed 40 days in open sea to prevent the import of epidemics.
- The first known efforts to create an international public health mechanism against epidemics of infectious diseases date to 1851: after an outbreak of cholera in Europe claimed thousands of lives in different countries, the first International Sanitary Conference was held to produce an international sanitary convention.
- 1892: International Sanitary Convention
- 1897: International Convention for preventive measures against plague
- 1902: creation of the International Sanitary Bureau
- 1945: approval of the proposal by Brazil and China to establish a new autonomous international health organisation (WHO)