scholarly journals What we have learnt about the World Health Organization from the Ebola outbreak

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1721) ◽  
pp. 20160307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Wenham
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Disease Control ◽  
West African ◽  
World Health ◽  
Leadership Responsibilities ◽  
Global Health Community ◽  
Health Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Emergency Programme ◽  
Health Organization

The World Health Organization's (WHO) reputation became irrefutably damaged during the Ebola outbreak, with a general consensus in the global health community that it fell short of its leadership responsibilities. This commentary offers a brief synopsis of the WHO's role during the outbreak and suggests that the disease outbreak demonstrates the tension that exists between the organization's normative and operational roles in health crises. While the WHO did offer some normative leadership during the Ebola outbreak, as per its constitution, it did not provide an effective operational response, yet nor did it have a mandate to do so. This division between the normative and operational was further highlighted by the discrepancy between what the global community expects the WHO to do in a health emergency, and what it is able to do with its financial and organizational constraints. Finally, the commentary considers the introduction of the WHO Health Emergency Programme, but suggests that this too may suffer from the same structural concerns that need to be addressed if the WHO is to continue in the role the global health community expects it to play, as both a normative and operational leader in global disease control. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The 2013–2016 West African Ebola epidemic: data, decision-making and disease control’.

scholarly journals The Covid infodemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Hyland ◽  
Feng (Kevin) Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Medical Research ◽  
World Health Organization ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Highly Cited

Abstract Covid-19, the greatest global health crisis for a century, brought a new immediacy and urgency to international bio-medical research. The pandemic generated intense competition to produce a vaccine and contain the virus, creating what the World Health Organization referred to as an ‘infodemic’ of published output. In this frantic atmosphere, researchers were keen to get their research noticed. In this paper, we explore whether this enthusiasm influenced the rhetorical presentation of research and encouraged scientists to “sell” their studies. Examining a corpus of the most highly cited SCI articles on the virus published in the first seven months of 2020, we explore authors’ use of hyperbolic and promotional language to boost aspects of their research. Our results show a significant increase in hype to stress certainty, contribution, novelty and potential, especially regarding research methods, outcomes and primacy. Our study sheds light on scientific persuasion at a time of intense social anxiety.

scholarly journals Global Governance and the WHO’s Mandate Post-COVID-19 Crisis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Vilbert
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
World Health ◽  
First Year ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Democratic Principle ◽  
The World ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Health Organization

The COVID-19 has renovated the debate about global health governance. A number of scholars have proposed that the World Health Organization should assume the position of a central coordinator with hierarchical powers, demanding nation-states to “share their sovereignty”. This article presents four main objections to this project. First, when international institutions receive leverage, they use to impose “one-size-fits-all” policies, which conflicts with the characteristic heterogeny across countries. Second, geopolitical questions and the distribution of power in multilateral institutions put developing countries in a position of vulnerability within a hierarchical order. Third, the risk of crowding out parallel initiatives, especially from non-state actors. Fourth, decisions about health can have a major impact on countries, which may thwart the internal democratic principle. A Pareto improvement would be possible by strengthening the WHO’s operational capacity and its ability to issue technical guidance and coordinate with countries. To test this hypothesis, this study analyses the possible influence of the WHO’s guidance in the first year of the coronavirus health crisis, from January 2020 to January 2021, in 37 countries reported in the World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017-2020). The OLS regression performed shows a statistically significant negative relationship between the trust in the WHO, assumed as a proxy for the level of the organization's penetration, and the number of cases of COVID-19 (per million people) in the countries of the sample. These findings reinforce the hypothesis that there is a valid case for the countries to strengthen the WHO’s mandate post-COVID-19, but they should enhance the operations of provision of reliable information and support. Nation-states, in particular the developing ones, should eschew the temptation to create a hierarchical global health structure, which may not only fail due to countries’ asymmetries but is likely to create losers in the process.

The Work of Patient Advocacy

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duana Fullwiley
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Sickle Cell ◽  
Patient Advocacy ◽  
World Health ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
The World ◽  
Patient Advocates ◽  
Umbrella Organization ◽  
Health Organization

This chapter further explores issues of patients' tenacity to shape science, through advocacy on an international level, and investigates the ways that making a disease public in Africa often entails locating it within discourses of humanitarian “crisis,” emergency, and global health prioritization. In this way, tireless patient advocates of African origin living in France created the sickle cell disease umbrella organization of the International Organization for the Fight against Sickle Cell (OILD), which succeeded in getting sickle cell anemia the attention of the World Health Organization and the United Nations in 2008. The OILD's strategy of making sickle cell visible to these multilateral institutions consisted of linking the disease to other pressing global health problems for development through means that often deployed uncertainty as “data.”

scholarly journals Mental health profile of Ghana

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Asare
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
African State ◽  
West African ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Profile ◽  
Severe Mental Disorder ◽  
The World ◽  
West African State ◽  
Health Organization

Ghana is a West African state that attained independence from Great Britain in 1957 and became a republican state in 1960. Its population is about 22 million (2004 estimate), distributed in ten regions. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 650000 of the population are suffering from severe mental disorder and 2166000 are suffering from moderate to mild mental disorder (see www.who.int/mental_health/policy/country/ghana/en).

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