The World Health Organization: A History (Global Health Histories)

by Marcos Cueto (Author), Marcos Cueto (Author), Theodore M. Brown (Author), Elizabeth Fee (Author)

New
Paperback
2019
$33.42

According to its Constitution, the mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) was nothing less than the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic status, or social condition. But how consistently and how well has the WHO pursued this mission since 1946? This comprehensive and engaging new history explores these questions by looking at its origins and its institutional antecedents, while also considering its contemporary and future roles. It examines how the WHO was shaped by the particular environments of the postwar and Cold War, the relative influence of US and other approaches to healthcare, and its place alongside sometimes competing international bodies such as UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Gates Foundation. The authors re-evaluate the relative success and failure of critical WHO campaigns, from early malaria and smallpox eradication programs to struggles with Ebola today.

Synopsis

According to its Constitution, the mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) was nothing less than the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic status, or social condition. But how consistently and how well has the WHO pursued this mission since 1946? This comprehensive and engaging new history explores these questions by looking at its origins and its institutional antecedents, while also considering its contemporary and future roles. It examines how the WHO was shaped by the particular environments of the postwar and Cold War, the relative influence of US and other approaches to healthcare, and its place alongside sometimes competing international bodies such as UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Gates Foundation. The authors re-evaluate the relative success and failure of critical WHO campaigns, from early malaria and smallpox eradication programs to struggles with Ebola today.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 388
Edition: 1
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11 Apr 2019
ISBN 10: 1108728847
ISBN 13: 9781108728843
Book Overview: A history of the World Health Organization, covering major achievements in its seventy years while highlighting the organization's internal tensions.

Media Reviews

Finally, an up-to-date history of the World Health Organization. This deft account spans the institution's aspirational post-World War II beginnings, the tensions and turnarounds of the Cold War period, and the embattled contemporary era of private encroachment on WHO turf. The authors bring together the contentious politics, personae, and programs through a grand narrative and little-known inside stories. Professor Anne-Emanuelle Birn, University of Toronto
This long-awaited volume by three distinguished historians of public health, does not disappoint. Though the general lines of this history are familiar, this extensively researched, clearly written volume greatly enriches this history, providing new details on nearly every page, and situating the WHO within the wider history of global political change. Professor Randall Packard, Johns Hopkins University

Author Bio

Marcos Cueto is Professor of the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz a unit of Fiocruz, the main Brazilian biomedical institute, and is co-editor of the journal Historia, Ciencias Saude - Manguinhos. His book, co-authored with Steven Palmer, Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History won the 2017 George Rosen award of the American Association for the History of Medicine. Theodore M. Brown is Professor of History in the School of Arts and Sciences and of Public Health Sciences and Medical Humanities in the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester, New York. He is an Associate Editor (History) of the American Journal of Public Health. Elizabeth Fee is the senior historian at the National Library of Medicine. She is widely published, including the co-authored book with Theodore M. Brown, Making Medical History: Life and Times of Henry E. Sigerist.