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The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialised United Nations agency which acts as a coordinator and researcher for public health around the world. Established on 7 April 1948, and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which had been an agency of the League of Nations. The WHO’s constitution states that its mission “is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.” Its major task is to combat disease, especially key infectious diseases, and to promote the general health of the peoples of the world. Examples of its work include years of fighting smallpox. In 1979 the WHO declared that the disease had been eradicated – the first disease in history to be completely eliminated by deliberate human design. The WHO is nearing success in developing vaccines against malaria and schistosomiasis and aims to eradicate polio within the next few years. The organization has already endorsed the world’s first official HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe from October 3, 2006, making it an international standard.
The WHO is financed by contributions from member states and from donors. In recent years the WHO’s work has involved more collaboration, currently around 80 such partnerships, with NGOs and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as with foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Voluntary contributions to the WHO from national and local governments, foundations and NGOs, other UN organizations, and the private sector (including pharmaceutical companies), now exceed that of assessed contributions (dues) from its 193 member nations.
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Purely private enterprise health care systems are comparatively rare. Where they exist, it is usually for a comparatively well-off subpopulation in a poorer country with a poorer standard of health care–for instance, private clinics for a small, wealthy expatriate population in an otherwise poor country[citation needed]. But there are countries with a majority-private health care system with residual public service (see Medicare, Medicaid). The other major models are public insurance systems. A Social security health care model is where workers and their families are insured by the State. A publicly funded health care model is where the residents of the country are insured by the State. Within this branch is Single-payer health care, which describes a type of financing system in which a single entity, typically a government run organisation, acts as the administrator (or “payer”) to collect all health care fees, and pay out all health care costs. Some advocates of universal health care assert that single-payer systems save money that could be used directly towards health care by reducing administrative waste. In practice this means that the government collects taxes from the public, businesses, etc., creates an entity to administer the supply of health care and then pays health care professionals. A single-payer universal health care system will actually save money through reduced bureaucratic administration costs. Social health insurance is where the whole population or most of the population is a member of a sickness insurance company. Most health services are provided by private enterprises which act as contractors, billing the government for patient care. In almost every country with a government health care system a parallel private system is allowed to operate. This is sometimes referred to as two-tier health care. The scale, extent, and funding of these private systems is very variable.
A traditional view is that improvements in health result from advancements in medical science. The medical model of health focuses on the eradication of illness through diagnosis and effective treatment. In contrast, the social model of health places emphasis on changes that can be made in society and in people’s own lifestyles to make the population healthier. It defines illness from the point of view of the individual’s functioning within their society rather than by monitoring for changes in biological or physiological signs.
