Brundtland, Gro Harlem, (born 20 April 1939), Prime Minister of Norway, Feb.–Oct. 1981, 1986–89 and 1990–96; United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change, 2007–10; Director General, World Health Organisation, 1998–2003

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 405-424
Author(s):  
Pia Acconci

The World Health Organization (who) was established in 1946 as a specialized agency of the United Nations (un). Since its establishment, the who has managed outbreaks of infectious diseases from a regulatory, as well as an operational perspective. The adoption of the International Health Regulations (ihrs) has been an important achievement from the former perspective. When the Ebola epidemic intensified in 2014, the who Director General issued temporary recommendations under the ihrs in order to reduce the spread of the disease and minimize cross-border barriers to international trade. The un Secretary General and then the Security Council and the General Assembly have also taken action against the Ebola epidemic. In particular, the Security Council adopted a resolution under Chapter vii of the un Charter, and thus connected the maintenance of the international peace and security to the health and social emergency. After dealing with the role of the who as a guide and coordinator of the reaction to epidemics, this article shows how the action by the Security Council against the Ebola epidemic impacts on the who ‘authority’ for the protection of health.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (Supplement_3) ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  

Abstract   Europe is facing two major structural changes: the climate crisis, having a significant impact on public health, and digitalization of the economy, that could play a role in mitigating climate change and its impacts on public health. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our lives in many ways including how we see public health, the climate change and has created the conditions for the almost exponential growth for telemedicine and digitalization in healthcare. Underlining that the world is facing an increasing innovation and integration of digital tools to address public health and environmental problems, as the UN Secretary-General and the Director-General of the World Health Organization both declared that we are currently fighting a climate “pandemic” in the same way as we are fighting COVID-19. Digital solutions have been implemented to address COVID-19 and impacted by reducing CO2 emissions and improving quality of life. Digital systems, including Artificial Intelligence, robots and drones, are now changing the paradigm of public health and environment management. Due to the complex nature of the information ecosystem our societies and communities live in, a digital public health approach can be managed to reduce harm to individual, community and population health, support social cohesion and trust in emergency response and interventions to deal with climate change. Digital health could, within 10 years establish a new paradigm in public and environmental health. Public health professionals need urgently to tackle digital health to bridge the gap with others areas of healthcare. During the COVID-19 crisis, national public health authorities have been challenged in the way they communicate with the public, engage with communities in collecting data to improve response, providing the scientific evidence, the day-to-day facts and figures. Likewise, The European Climate Pact provides a space for collectively develop and implement climate solutions. The Climate Pact is an open, inclusive and evolving initiative for climate action through an online platform and citizen dialogues and exchanges, it will foster the link between the digital and green transition. This workshop aims to share the experiences of digital public health interventions with significant impact on climate change mitigation during the pandemic. It will be organised as a round table, starting by setting the scene with an introduction to key digital health concepts and challenges. Each speaker will give a short pitch on how they have experienced the challenge of using digital systems in public health and how they approached its management during the crisis. This will be followed by a panel discussion. Participants will have ample time to ask questions to the panellists. The workshop will end with a summary of a selection of tools participants can use in their own environmental management activities and key take home messages from the panellist will be provided as a conclusion. Key messages Digital Public Health has been establishing evidence on interventions with significant effects on reducing the impact of climate crisis. A Partnership is needed across the health system and society to manage this crisis. European Green Deal and Climate Pact could be used as a roadmap in digital public health.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-135
Author(s):  
Princy Louis Palatty ◽  
Rosme David ◽  
Belinda Mangalath Philip ◽  
Clint Sunny ◽  
Mamatha J ◽  
...  

: A series of an acute atypical respiratory disease occurred during December 2019 in Wuhan, China, that quickly metamorphosed as a pandemic, spreading across the globe, leaving more than 104,911,186 infected and more than 2,278,579 dead, in its wake within a year. This Novel Coronavirus, was also called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease was called Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19). On 30 January 2020, The World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General, declared the novel coronavirus outbreak, a public health emergency of international concern and flagged off WHO's highest level of alarm.: To elaborate the various drug therapies used in trials and vaccines available for COVID-19 across the globe.: We compiled the literature searches under a single heading and scrutinized over 154 articles, for extracting data on the various pharmacotherapeutic approaches available to treat COVID-19.: Despite wide and varied treatment guidelines being available, the cure or prevention is still elusive for COVID-19. The categoric efficacy of vaccines must be proved to tackle the fast-mutating coronavirus.: Current medical management is largely supportive with no targeted therapy available. Several drugs including lopinavir-ritonavir, remdesivir, antibiotics, hydroxychloroquine, steroids, anticoagulants, and antidiabetic drugs like metformin have been tried in clinical trials. Vaccines targeting the three different components of SARS-CoV-2 viruses, in different phases of clinical trials world-wide, have been made available.


2020 ◽  
Vol V (IV) ◽  
pp. 30-40
Author(s):  
Arshad Ali ◽  
Athar Rashid ◽  
Shahid Abbas

Every year, the United Nations General Assembly holds a meeting of leaders from different countries. Imran Khan, prime minister of Pakistan, made speeches in the General Assembly of the United Nations twice. The first emphatic address he made at the United Nations General Assembly was on 27 September 2019, and the second was on 25 September 2020. This study aims to find out the major themes in both speeches and examine the frequently used words in the two speeches. For this study, his two speeches were taken from the internet and converted into plain text to compile a corpus. AntConc was used to find out the frequency of frequently used terms and to demonstrate the concordance of frequently used words. The results reveal substantial similarities and slight variations in the content of the two speeches. The major themes highlighted in the speech were India, RSS, Kashmir, Islamophobia, and climate change.


Author(s):  
Anne Hardy

In the past twenty years we have seen changes in technology that have reconfigured the way in which tourists plan, travel, reflect and share experiences. These changes have caused us to reconsider how tourists travel and how they make decisions, as well as how destinations market themselves. The now ubiquitous use of mobile phones has been documented as being a major influence (Wang, Park and Fesenmaier, 2012). Yet, while large swathes of research have focused on the use of technology and the impact that technology has had upon tourists’ decision making, there is comparatively far less research that concentrates on using technology to understand where tourists travel to, and how they move between destinations and attractions. The tourism industry has been documented as lagging far further behind than other industries in its use of technology, particularly that which delivers research insights (Eccleston, Hardy and Hyslop, 2020). The reasons for this have not yet been explored in great detail, but they are quite possibly due to the fact that the tourism industry is dominated by small to medium sized businesses whose capacity for expenditure on the use of technology and research is limited, relative to other industry sectors such as mining and forestry. A second reason is that tourism is reliant on an element that is often far harder to control – people. Unlike sectors that use biological elements as their key resources, and can place sensors where needed without requiring consent, tourism’s reliance on humans and their interaction with technology makes tracking far more complex. A third reason is that tourism arguably lags behind other sectors because the methods available to the industry to track and understand mobility involve complex technology, and different methods require specialist analytical skills. The Director General of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, argued that decision makers are facing an ‘infodemic’ as a result of large swathes of data being made available in order to assist understanding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (Zarocostas, 2020). The plethora of options facing the industry in regards to which technology to use and how, is undoubtedly adding to this lag.


2022 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young-Chool Choi

This study aims to evaluate the status of the partnerships with important international organisations that Korea employs in operating its foreign aid projects from a humanitarian point of view. On the basis of this information, Korea intends to seek ways of effectively supporting underdeveloped countries through future co-operation with these organisations. The main international organisations analysed are the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the (United Nations) Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). These international organisations support underdeveloped countries through co-operative relationships not only with Korea but also with important donor countries of the OECD. This study focuses on establishing the factors that Korea needs to consider when providing humanitarian aid in the future to underdeveloped countries via such international organisations.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 866-867

The appointment of Dr. Martha Eliot, Associate Chief of the Children's Bureau, as Assistant Director General of the United Nations World Health Organization has been announced both in Washington and Geneva. It was also announced that Dr. Eliot had resigned from the Children's Bureau, which she had served for 25 years, and that Dr. Leona Baumgartner, on 6 months' leave as Assistant Commissioner of Health, New York City, has been appointed as Associate Chief of the Children's Bureau to fill Dr. Eliot's place. Dr. Eliot will go to Geneva, headquarters of the world organization and Dr. Baumgartner will come to Washington June 1.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document