A detailed, illustrated history of the work of the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean over the past four decades. Drawing upon a wide range of published and unpublished sources, the book tells the story of successes and failures, changing patterns of disease and evolving health strategies in a part of the world undergoing rapid development. The book marks the first time that the history of international health work in this area has been fully recorded and interpreted. The book contains 28 chapters presented in three main parts. The first traces the history and evolution of WHO and EMRO, moving from the origins of international health cooperation to the challenges and priorities that characterized health work during the 1980s. Chapters in the second part concentrate on the special health problems of Eastern Mediterranean countries. These range from the plight of the Palestinian refugees to health regulations governing the Mecca pilgrimage. Other topics include the special problem of traditional practices that harm women and children, efforts to combat prejudice against the mentally ill, and the new health problems created by changing lifestyles. The final part explains how the Regional Office operates, in partnership with a vast number of individuals and institutions, to contribute to the global work of WHO.

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.

Since the beginning of the World Health Organization, many of its staff members, regional offices, member states, and directors-general have grappled with the question of what a 'spiritual dimension' of health looks like, and how it might enrich the health policies advocated by their organisations. Contrary to the wide-spread perception that 'spirituality' is primarily related to palliative care and has emerged relatively recently within the organisation, this study shows that its history is considerably longer and more complex, and has been closely connected to the WHO's ethical aspirations, its quest for more holistic and equitable healthcare, and its struggle with the colonial legacy of international health organisations. While such ideals and struggles silently motivated many of the key actors and policies - such as the provision of universal primary healthcare - which for decades have embodied the organisation's loftiest aspirations, the WHO's official relationship with 'spirituality' advanced in fits, leaps, and setbacks. At times creative and interdisciplinary, at others deeply political, this process was marked by cycles of institutional forgetting and remembering. Rather than as a triumph of religious lobbyists, this book argues, the 'spiritual dimension' of health may be better understood as a 'ghost' that has haunted - and continues to haunt - the WHO as it comes to terms with its mandate of advancing health as a state of 'complete well-being' available to all.

A history of the World Health Organization, covering major achievements in its seventy years while also highlighting the organization's internal tensions. This account by three leading historians of medicine examines how well the organization has pursued its aim of everyone, everywhere attaining the highest possible level of health.

"The World Health Organization's history spans more than six decades. The past twenty years has been a particularly busy period in the organization's development, given the transition from international to global health cooperation and thus the need to adapt to major changes in its operating environment. Consequently, the WHO has been a direct part of new institutional arrangements and has shared in increased funding to provide for global health. It has also had to adapt its activities and programs in response to rival initiatives, leading to many changes--not only to the names of specific parts of the WHO but also to the nature of their activities. This second edition explores the organization's institutional complexity."--Back cover.

Based on extensive archival research, this study examines the role of the Rockefeller Foundation and the League of Nations in improving public health during the interwar period. Barona argues that the Foundation applied a model of business efficiency to its ideology of spreading good health, creating a revolution in public health practice.