What is the World Health Organization and why does it matter?

From laboratories to battlefields, the United Nations specialised health agency has been dedicated to the wellbeing of all people since 1948. It is guided by science and supported by its 194 member nations, including the United States, a co-founder that on Monday announced plans to withdraw.

What has WHO done for the world? The short answer is – a lot. The UN agency currently works with its membership and on the health frontlines in more than 150 locations and has achieved many public health milestones.

Here’s what you need to know about the planet’s biggest health body:

Tackling emergencies

Amid crises, conflict, the continuing threat of disease outbreaks and climate change, WHO has responded, from wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine to ensuring lifesaving vaccines and medical supplies arrive in remote or dangerous areas.

With healthcare facing unprecedented risks, WHO documented in 2023 over 1,200 attacks affecting workers, patients, hospitals, clinics and ambulances across 19 countries and territories, resulting in over 700 deaths and nearly 1,200 injuries.

Indeed, WHO teams often go where others do not. They routinely evacuate injured patients and provide lifesaving equipment, supplies and services in conflict or disaster-ravaged areas.

Watch below as WHO teams helped to unroll a multi-agency polio vaccination campaign in war-torn besieged Gaza in September 2024, when the fast-spreading virus reappeared 25 years after it had been eradicated:

Tracking and addressing health crises

Every day and through the night, teams of WHO experts sift through thousands of pieces of information, including scientific papers and disease surveillance reports, scanning for signals of disease outbreaks or other public health threats, from avian flu to COVID-19.

WHO mobilises to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks while also strengthening access to essential health services.

That includes bolstering hospital capacity to do everything from delivering new babies to treating war injuries and training healthcare workers.

Eliminating diseases around the world

A wide range of diseases and conditions are ripe for elimination given the right public health policies, including neglected infectious and vector-borne diseases, sexually transmitted infections, diseases passed from mother to child and those that vaccines can prevent.

The UN health agency supplies essential medicines and medical equipment while working to enable – and where possible, strengthen – laboratory capacity to diagnose diseases.

In 2024, WHO Member States achieved several milestones in tackling these major global health challenges. Seven countries (Brazil, Chad, India, Jordan, Pakistan, Timor-Leste, and Viet Nam) eliminated a range of tropical diseases, including leprosy and trachoma.

Mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis have been eliminated in Belize, Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Namibia reached a key milestone towards elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and hepatitis B.

WHO has also played a key role over the past seven decades, including in eradicating smallpox in 1980, achieving the near eradication of polio and providing lifesaving assistance in Gaza during the recent war.

AI and digital health

WHO is embracing new frontiers, including artificial intelligence (AI), in digital health.

As the influence of emerging AI technologies continues to grow, WHO is working to ensure its safety and effectiveness for health.

That includes new guidance published last October listing key regulatory considerations on such issues as harnessing the potential of AI to treat or detect conditions like cancer or tuberculosis while minimising risks like unethical data collection, cybersecurity threats and amplifying biases or misinformation.

Taking on deadly climate-related health crisis

The climate-related health crisis affects at least 3.5 billion people – nearly half of the global population.

Extreme heat, weather events and air pollution caused millions of deaths in 2023, putting enormous pressure on health systems and the working population, from current wildfires burning across the US west coast to deadly flash floods in Indonesia.

Part of WHO’s response has been to protect health from the wide range of impacts of climate change, which includes assessing vulnerabilities and developing plans.

The UN agency has also worked on implementing response systems for key risks, such as extreme heat and infectious disease and supporting resilience and adaptation in health-determining sectors such as water and food.

What’s WHO working on now?

WHO is leading efforts for a global treaty take a further, deeper step to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, much along the lines of the founders of the 1851 International Sanitary Conference.

The UN agency is also currently working to achieve its “triple billion targets”.

Set in 2019, the targets are that by 2025, one billion more people will be benefitting from universal health coverage, one billion more people will be better protected from health emergencies and one billion more people will be enjoying better health and wellbeing.

Who leads WHO?

The leadership is truly international.

Based in Geneva, the UN agency is headed by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The current approved biennium programme budget for 2024-2025 is $6.83 billion, coming from member assessments, alongside voluntary contributions.

WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly, is made up of its member nations, which meet annually to agree on WHO priorities and policies.

Members make decisions on health goals and strategies that will guide their own public health work and the work of the WHO Secretariat to move the world towards better health and wellbeing for all. That includes implementing reform measures that have made WHO more effective.

Learn more about WHO here and in our latest video below: