This archive collects coverage of the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency that coordinates global public health efforts. Stories here focus on positive milestones, policy advances, and initiatives that reflect progress in disease prevention, health equity, and international cooperation.
Global health experts at the United Nations are recommending that marijuana and its key components be formally rescheduled under international drug treaties. WHO is also moving to make clear that CBD-focused preparations containing no more than 0.2 percent THC are “not under international control” at all.
The United Nations health agency announced on Monday the condition, also known as gender dysphoria, has been reclassified as a sexual health condition.
The World Health Organization (WHO) certified Paraguay as having eliminated malaria, the first country in the Americas to be granted this status since Cuba in 1973.
WHO director general says significant strides have been made in fight against sleeping sickness, elephantiasis and other neglected tropical diseases
Smallpox was declared eradicated on May 8, 1980, ending a disease that had stalked humans for at least 3,000 years and killed up to 30% of those it infected. The WHO’s campaign paired mass vaccination with relentless case-tracking, led largely by local health workers. It remains the only human disease ever eliminated.
Global malaria eradication became an official international goal in the spring of 1955, when the World Health Assembly voted to coordinate the first planet-wide campaign against the ancient disease. By the time the effort was suspended in 1969, malaria had been eliminated from 37 countries and territories — proof that organized human cooperation could push back a killer older than civilization itself.
