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[Narrator 1:] From the very beginning, the human race has had to contend with problems of survival, disease, and death.
Through the ages, entire populations were decimated and became extinct, leaving behind only scant remnants of their cultures.
It's difficult to establish at what point in history medicine appeared,
but we have some record of diseases being treated in various parts of the world as far back as 2000 years BC.
[Narrator 2:] Throughout the centuries, navigation was developed.
With the movement of people around the planet, terrifying epidemics of cholera, yellow fever, and plague began to spread.
Nations gradually realized that there was a need to fight these diseases together,
and in 1851 the first International Health Conference was held in Paris.
In 1919, a new strain of influenza struck more victims in a few months than had been killed throughout the first World War.
The League of Nations did consider health issues,
but it was only after the Second World War that the United Nations conference drew up the plan for a separate international health body.
[Narrator 1:] In September 1947, when cholera broke out in Egypt, the World Health Organization sprang into action.
It couldn’t afford to wait for its formal constitution which was signed on April 7th, 1948,
the day since celebrated globally as World Health Day.
In June 1948, the first World Health Assembly opened in Geneva with 53 countries represented.
[Dr Brock Chisholm:] The suffering of millions of human beings in scores of countries will be alleviated,
and many, many thousands of lives will be saved.
[Clapping]
[Narrator 2:] Quarantine regulations were drawn up to curb the spread of communicable diseases.
But the root causes of ill health also had to be tackled.
[Dr M.G. Candau:] The only enemies worth fighting are ill health, poverty, and ignorance.
[Narrator 2:] Malaria, a widespread fatal disease, was one of the top priorities facing the new organization.
In the early 1950s, spectacular successes were achieved through systematic spraying with DDT.
In 1955, fearful that the mosquitos would develop resistance to the spraying,
the World Health Organization launched a global campaign to eradicate malaria.
The dream was not to be. By the late '60s, it was clear eradication was not possible.
Controlling malaria was a more realistic approach.
Smallpox: One out of four people it touched died.
The rest were marked for life. Millions were affected.
In 1958, countries started massive vaccination campaigns to wipe out the disease worldwide,
but to vaccinate every man, woman, and child on earth proved an overwhelming task.
In 1967, the World Health Organization launched a new campaign with a different approach:
Contain the disease at each outbreak. Stop the chain of transmission.
Every case had to be tracked down. All who had been in contact had to be found and vaccinated.
The search went on everywhere, in schools, public places, through person-to-person contacts.
Even financial rewards were offered for those reporting cases.
The question was asked over and over again: Have you seen anyone who looks like this?
Step by step, the disease was pushed back to the very last case:
Ali Maow Maalin.
With Ali, a train of transmission as old as mankind was broken. Smallpox was no more.
On the 8th of May 1980, Dr. Halfdan Mahler, Director General of the World Health Organization,
signed a certificate of eradication.
The ten-year campaign cost three hundred million dollars, a real bargain.
The world saves each year one thousand million dollars on vaccines and care of the sick alone.
The saving in human suffering has no price.
Important as the elimination of smallpox was,
hundreds of millions in the less-developed countries were still trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and disease.
Most people had no access to basic health care.
Average life expectancy hovered at fifty.
Many mothers died in childbirth and many children like these died before reaching adolescence.
[Narrator 1:] Something had to be done.
A new effective long-term plan that would benefit everyone.
Health for all by the year 2000 was the goal set at the World Health Assembly in 1977.
A year later, the way ahead was declared at Alma-Ata.
In villages such as this one, a new vision began to take root,
a vision based on primary health care.
That is, health for people in their homes, schools, villages where they live and work.
A vision based on local men and women trained to care for common health problems.
[Narrator 1:] Forty years ago, the World Health Organization was created to help build a healthier world.
Where are we today? World population has reached the five billion mark.
Remarkable progress has been made in science and medicine,
yet the health picture varies widely.
In industrialized nations, many millions are invested in medical technology, but blatant inequalities in health status remain.
[Narrator 2:] High technology takes us ahead. It also takes its toll.
For example, nuclear accidents pose lasting threats to health.
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In response to these dangers, groups are demanding control over their health, and individuals are taking personal action.
In the poorer nations, the picture is very different.
Three quarters of the world's population receive less than ten percent of the world's budget for health.
Women have a two hundred times greater risk of dying during pregnancy and childbirth than women in the rich nations.
[Narrator 1:] While these countries still face the diseases of poverty, they must learn to confront the diseases of affluence.
Fueled by the adoption of western lifestyles, alcohol and tobacco use surge upward.
So do heart disease and cancer rates.
For the first time in their history, these countries must battle yesterday's and tomorrow's diseases at the same time.
Today, the world is facing a grave new threat: the AIDS virus.
We don’t know where is came from, but we do know that it brings suffering and death.
More than half of the people diagnosed with AIDS have died.
Fortunately, it can only be spread from one person to the next in a few ways:
sex, blood, and from mother to child.
The AIDS virus is already present on every continent.
Governments acting individually cannot stop its spread.
The only way it can be stopped in any country is for it to be stopped in all countries.
From WHO the call has now gone out to the family of nations, to nations, and to individuals.
The call that says that we know how to stop AIDS,
and what is now required is that responsible actions take place at the individual, the national, and the international level.
[Narrator 2:] Over the past forty years,
the World Health Organization has shown what can be achieved through international cooperation.
Eradication of smallpox, a major reduction in child mortality through immunization and anti-diarrheal disease control,
a confidence to promote safe motherhood programs
which aim to halve maternal deaths in developing countries by the end of the century.
Control of tuberculosis and leprosy through treatment at home,
and many other similar low cost solutions too numerous to mention.
These gains, the millions of lives saved, and the untold suffering avoided have been achieved
through involving people in their own health and development, cooperation between countries,
research, and proper use of appropriate technology.
Strengthening health systems and health information,
that is, through WHO's primary health care approach.
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[Dr Halfdan Mahler:] Over the past forty years, we have learned the difficulty
in WHO that development, and that includes of course health development,
cannot be achieved by proxy.
It has to be carried out by the people concerned themselves.
But to help them do that in a self-relying way,
WHO has shown them how much they themselves can do to improve their own health.
And so it has promoted research and development,
leading to a string of low-cost technologies that can be adapted to different social, economic, and cultural situations,
and afforded even by the poorest countries.
But most important, WHO has shown how to set up the permanent structures required in the health and many other sectors
to make sure that technology becomes accessible to the masses and not just to the privileged few.
The Alma-Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care, now ten years old,
clearly mapped out the road on which we are firmly engaged.
People everywhere from north to south, east to west,
recognize beyond all their differences that health is good for all people and essential indeed for human progress.
That there’s both economic value and social justice in health.
Surely we must all recognize that even if health is not everything,
there is nothing without health.
In the interest of the human race, there must health for all and all for health.
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[HEALTH IS A STATE OF COMPLETE PHYSICAL, MENTAL, AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING
AND NOT MERELY THE ABSENCE OF DISEASE OR INFIRMITY.
PAHO / WHO CONSTITUTION]
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