Since 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) has launched numerous programs aimed at improving health conditions around the globe, ranging from efforts to eradicate smallpox to education programs about the health risks of smoking. In setting global health priorities and carrying out initiatives, the WHO bureaucracy has faced the challenge of reconciling the preferences of a small minority of wealthy nations, who fund the organization, with the demands of poorer member countries, who hold the majority of votes. In The World Health Organization between North and South, Nitsan Chorev shows how the WHO bureaucracy has succeeded not only in avoiding having its agenda co-opted by either coalition of member states but also in reaching a consensus that fit the bureaucracy’s own principles and interests. Chorev assesses the response of the WHO bureaucracy to member-state pressure in two particularly contentious moments: when during the 1970s and early 1980s developing countries forcefully called for a more equal international economic order, and when in the 1990s the United States and other wealthy countries demanded international organizations adopt neoliberal economic reforms. In analyzing these two periods, Chorev demonstrates how strategic maneuvering made it possible for a vulnerable bureaucracy to preserve a relatively autonomous agenda, promote a consistent set of values, and protect its interests in the face of challenges from developing and developed countries alike.

Using internal documents, meeting records, personal interviews and secondary sources, Siddiqi analyses WHO policies and programmes from a non-medical perspective. He examines charges of politicization and traces their rise over the past two decades, including their recent link to fears about a complete breakdown of multilateral cooperation. Siddiqi also chronicles the Malaria Eradication Programme from its enthusiastic inauguration in the 1950s to its demise and substitution by less ambitious initiatives after 1969. Through this case study he illumines a strategic shift in WHO policyfrom the 'vertical' approach of targeting a single disease to a 'horizontal', multi-pronged attack on a spectrum of health problems.

"World Health Organization, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, South African Medical Research Council"--Title page.

Regular physical activity is proven to help prevent and treat noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease stroke diabetes and breast and colon cancer. It also helps to prevent hypertension overweight and obesity and can improve mental health quality of life and well-being. In addition to the multiple health benefits of physical activity societies that are more active can generate additional returns on investment including a reduced use of fossil fuels cleaner air and less congested safer roads. These outcomes are interconnected with achieving the shared goals political priorities and ambition of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. The new WHO global action plan to promote physical activity responds to the requests by countries for updated guidance and a framework of effective and feasible policy actions to increase physical activity at all levels. It also responds to requests for global leadership and stronger regional and national coordination and the need for a whole-of-society response to achieve a paradigm shift in both supporting and valuing all people being regularly active according to ability and across the life course. The action plan was developed through a worldwide consultation process involving governments and key stakeholders across multiple sectors including health sports transport urban design civil society academia and the private sector.

This work presents the broad lines of the action and evolution of the World Health Organization (WHO). It identifies some of the problems WHO has had to face in the past, and will have to confront in the future. It discusses in detail the historical origins, WHO's objectives and the evolution of its strategy and programmes. It reviews its structures as well as the problems raised by its decentralization. It examines the Organization's action in the field of technical cooperation and looks into several of WHO's more important past and present programmes. In its general conclusion, it attempts to envisage the future of the Organization. The present study is based essentially on the official documentation of the WHO, open and restricted. The strength of this book lies in the personal experience of the main author, a former WHO official, who has orientated the book's research in specific directions and has added some complementary information.

1. Introduction and methods of work.-- 2. Alcohol: equity and social determinants.-- 3. Cardiovascular disease: equity and social determinants.-- 4. Health and nutrition of children: equity and social determinants.-- 5. Diabetes: equity and social determinants.-- 6. Food safety: equity and social determinants.-- 7. Mental disorders: equity and social determinants.-- 8. Neglected tropical diseases: equity and social determinants.-- 9. Oral health: equity and social determinants.-- 10. Unintended pregnancy and pregnancy outcome: equity and social determinants.-- 11. Tobacco use: equity and social determinants.-- 12. Tuberculosis: the role of risk factors and social determinants.-- 13. Violence and unintentional injury: equity and social determinants.-- 14. Synergy for equity.