scholarly journals Mitigation/Adaptation and Health: Health Policymaking in the Global Response to Climate Change and Implications for other Upstream Determinants

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 629-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay F. Wiley
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Health ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
World Health ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
The Face ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Development Objectives

In coming decades, enhanced global health governance will be crucial to achieving international health and development objectives in the face of a number of challenges; this article focuses on one of them. Climate change, which is now widely recognized as the defining challenge of the 21st century, will make the work of ensuring the conditions in which people can be healthy more difficult in a myriad of ways. Scientists from both the health and climate communities have been highlighting the significant interaction between climate and health for decades and have made significant strides in integrating health and environmental research. Those of us in the law and policy community have been a bit slow to catch up, and have only just begun to call for better integration of our responses to health and environmental concerns. Environmental health specialists at the World Health Organization have recently pointed to a mandate for better integration of health and environmental concerns within the United Nations system. The Millennium Development Goals interweave health, environmental, and development concerns.

scholarly journals Franco’s Spain and the Politics of International Health

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-87
Author(s):  
David Brydan
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
International Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
International Health Organizations ◽  
Post War ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Nations System

Liberal international health organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Health Organization (WHO) played an important role in Spain’s post-war search for legitimacy, and social experts served as a vanguard for Spain’s integration into the United Nations system. The idea of international health as a technical, apolitical field was particularly important in enabling the Franco regime to overcome its outsider status. At the height of Spain’s diplomatic isolation after 1945, a fierce battle raged at the WHO over the question of Spanish membership, which saw it excluded from the new organization. But the WHO was one of the first international bodies Spain was admitted to in the 1950s, paving the way to full United Nations membership. Spain’s rapid integration into the WHO reflected the success of the Franco regime in exploiting the ‘technical’ and ‘apolitical’ language of international health to overcome international political opposition.

scholarly journals The Stellenbosch Consensus on Legal National Responses to Public Health Risks

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-68
Author(s):  
Roojin Habibi ◽  
Steven J. Hoffman ◽  
Gian Luca Burci ◽  
Thana Cristina de Campos ◽  
Danwood Chirwa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Global Health ◽  
International Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Public Health Emergencies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Health Regulations

Abstract The International Health Regulations (ihr), of which the World Health Organization is custodian, govern how countries collectively promote global health security, including prevention, detection, and response to global health emergencies such as the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. Countries are permitted to exercise their sovereignty in taking additional health measures to respond to such emergencies if these measures adhere to Article 43 of this legally binding instrument. Overbroad measures taken during recent public health emergencies of international concern, however, reveal that the provision remains inadequately understood. A shared understanding of the measures legally permitted by Article 43 is a necessary step in ensuring the fulfillment of obligations, and fostering global solidarity and resilience in the face of future pandemics. In this consensus statement, public international law scholars specializing in global health consider the legal meaning of Article 43 using the interpretive framework of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

scholarly journals How blameless are hospitals in climate change? An example of a province in Turkey

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Manar Aslan ◽  
Ayşe Yıldız
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Medical Waste ◽  
Public Hospitals ◽  
World Health ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Carbon Footprints ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Health Organization

Abstract Starting from the 1970s, the discussion about the negative effects of human activity on the world has accelerated and with a increasingly raised voice and it has been noted that the natural balance of our world was being altered. The World Health Organization has focused its policies and directives on strategies aimed on dealing with climate change (and its impact on human health), and diseases related to air pollution and implementing health-related sustainable development goals in climate friendly-hospitals. Hospitals exist to treat patients, but they also pollute the environment because hospitals consume a lot of energy and water and produce hazardous waste. These organizations need to work hard to improve their carbon footprints. The study investigated practices at 21 public hospitals in Konya, Turkey. Results show that domestic waste was on average 54.83 tons per year, medical waste was 33.59 tons per year and packing waste was 24.36 tons per year. It was determined that medical waste disposal costs on average of €26,800 per annum, and the amount of medical waste per bed was 1.15 kilograms per annum. According to 2014 medical waste data the average medical waste per bed of these hospitals in Konya province is less than the average in Turkish public hospitals, in which it is 1.18 kilograms per bed. The hospitals in our study were found to be especially inadequate at water management and did not pay much attention to green practices.

scholarly journals Globalization’s Implications for G20 Governance

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-54
Author(s):  
John Kirton ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
World Health ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

The rapid globalization of money, goods, services, taxation, knowledge, people, political ideas, digitalization, and especially pathogens and ecological pollutants has intensified, along with rising inequality, multipolarity, protectionism, isolationism and geopolitical tensions. Together these factors present new challenges to 21st century global governance led by the systemically significant states which make up the Group of Twenty (G20). G20 governance has expanded in response, but with more success on its old, incompletely globalized economic agenda than on its newer, more globalized digitalization, health pandemics and climate change agendas. The most recent G20 summit in Osaka, Japan on 28–29 June 2019 did make advances on tax and digitalization but not on the looming health risks and the existential threat of climate change. Preparations for the Saudi Arabian-hosted Riyadh summit, to be held on 21–22 November 2020, have made some progress on the latter amidst the unprecedented crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis shows that the G20’s architecture needs to be further strengthened by institutionalizing G20 environment and health ministers’ meetings; inviting the executive heads of the United Nations (UN) bodies for climate change, biodiversity, the environment and health, as well as the leaders of key outside countries, to the summits; giving the UN and World Health Organization the same G20 status as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; and holding a second annual summit at the UN each September focused on the sustainable development goals.

Part III Human Health and Human Rights, 13 Healthy Oceans for Healthy Lives: The Contribution of the World Health Organization to Global Ocean Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Negri Stefania
Keyword(s):  
World Health Organization ◽  
Human Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
Health And Human Rights ◽  
Ocean Governance ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
Health Organization

This chapter focuses on the contribution of the World Health Organization (WHO) to global ocean governance. It first provides an overview of ‘oceans and human health’ as a new interdisciplinary area of research before discussing the range of benefits to human health provided by the oceans as well as the public health risks associated with the degradation of coastal and ocean water quality due to anthropogenic and natural hazards. It then examines the WHO’s institutional profile and position in the United Nations system, its governing texts and governing bodies, and competence and activity in the field of environmental health. It also considers the important role played by the WHO in global ocean governance, highlighting specific areas of intervention, and its commitment to ocean-related Sustainable Development Goals. Finally, it analyses the potential for a strengthened and more visible role of the WHO in ocean governance.

scholarly journals The Stellenbosch Consensus on the International Legal Obligation to Collaborate and Assist in Addressing Pandemics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Margherita M. Cinà ◽  
Steven J. Hoffman ◽  
Gian Luca Burci ◽  
Thana Cristina de Campos ◽  
Danwood Chirwa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
International Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
The Face ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Health Regulations ◽  
Legal Meaning

Abstract The International Health Regulations (ihr), of which the World Health Organization is custodian, govern how countries collectively promote global health security, including prevention, detection, and response to potential global health emergencies such as the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. While Article 44 of this binding legal instrument requires countries to collaborate and assist each other in meeting their respective obligations, recent events demonstrate that the precise nature and scope of these legal obligations are ill-understood. A shared understanding of the level and type of collaboration legally required by the ihr is a necessary step in ensuring these obligations can be acted upon and fully realized, and in fostering global solidarity and resilience in the face of future pandemics. In this consensus statement, public international law scholars specializing in global health consider the legal meaning of Article 44 using the interpretive framework of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

Organization of restrictive quarantine measures to prevent especially dangerous infections

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
Petr Ilyin
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Clinical Symptoms ◽  
International Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Former Ussr ◽  
Health Regulations

Especially dangerous infections (EDIs) belong to the conditionally labelled group of infectious diseases that pose an exceptional epidemic threat. They are highly contagious, rapidly spreading and capable of affecting wide sections of the population in the shortest possible time, they are characterized by the severity of clinical symptoms and high mortality rates. At the present stage, the term "especially dangerous infections" is used only in the territory of the countries of the former USSR, all over the world this concept is defined as "infectious diseases that pose an extreme threat to public health on an international scale." Over the entire history of human development, more people have died as a result of epidemics and pandemics than in all wars combined. The list of especially dangerous infections and measures to prevent their spread were fixed in the International Health Regulations (IHR), adopted at the 22nd session of the WHO's World Health Assembly on July 26, 1969. In 1970, at the 23rd session of the WHO's Assembly, typhus and relapsing fever were excluded from the list of quarantine infections. As amended in 1981, the list included only three diseases represented by plague, cholera and anthrax. However, now annual additions of new infections endemic to different parts of the earth to this list take place. To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has already included more than 100 diseases in the list of especially dangerous infections.

scholarly journals The Utilization of Protective Face Masks among Polish Healthcare Workers during COVID-19 Pandemic: Do We Pass the Exam?

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 841
Author(s):  
Radomir Reszke ◽  
Łukasz Matusiak ◽  
Piotr K. Krajewski ◽  
Marta Szepietowska ◽  
Rafał Białynicki-Birula ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Internet Survey ◽  
World Health ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Protective Measures ◽  
Who Criteria ◽  
The Face ◽  
Health Organization

Relevant personal protective measures during the COVID-19 pandemic include face masks, possibly decreasing the risk of infection among the general population and healthcare workers (HCW) if utilized properly. The aim of the study was to assess whether different Polish HCW utilize face masks according to the 2020 World Health Organization guidance (WHO) criteria. This cross-sectional study included 1156 respondents who participated in an internet survey evaluating mask-related behaviors. All the WHO criteria were complied with by 1.4% of participants, regardless of medical profession, specialty or place of employment. HCW mostly adhered to criterion 1 (C1; strict covering of the face and mouth with the mask; 90.8%), C4 (washing/disinfecting the hands after touching/taking off the mask; 49%) and C3 (taking off the mask properly without touching the anterior surface; 43.4%), whereas C2 (avoidance of touching the mask with hands) was complied with least commonly (6.8%). HCW with mask-induced itch (31.6%) complied to C2 less often (odds ratio 0.53; p = 0.01). The study reveals that Polish HCW rarely adhere to all the 2020 WHO guidance criteria on the use of masks, whereas the adherence to particular criteria is variable and may be associated with the presence of skin-related conditions and other factors. Better compliance with the recommendations in the future is necessary to increase personal safety of HCW and prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

scholarly journals How Loud and Clear Rung the Alarm Bell: The Communication Efforts of WHO on the Beginning of COVID-19 Outbreak

2021 ◽  
pp. 002073142110249
Author(s):  
Huriye Toker
Keyword(s):  
Risk Communication ◽  
International Development ◽  
International Health ◽  
Well Being ◽  
World Health ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Releases ◽  
The Media ◽  
Credible Information ◽  
Health Organization

As seen clearly from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, health is an important foreign policy and diplomatic issue connected with security, economic well-being, and international development. According to risk communication researchers, effective, transparent, and timely information sharing is the most important tool after vaccines for responding to pandemics. This study aims to start a scholarly discussion on the risk communication efforts of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the COVID-19 outbreak. We analyzed WHO’s communication efforts during the first 3 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the leading international health organization, WHO was responsible for providing rapid, up-to-date, and credible information for the public and the media. The selected research items were 42 news releases and statements provided by WHO between December 31, 2019, and March 30, 2020. These were subjected to qualitative and quantitative content analyses using the NVivo 12 qualitative analysis software program for coding. The data were coded under 6 variables (date of publication, topics, frequency, wording of the COVID-19 outbreak, sourcing, and themes of the releases). While 54.7% of WHO's communications were devoted to the COVID-19 outbreak, more than half were not issued until March. That is, instead of early risk communication and clear warnings about the outbreak, WHO acted overcautiously, preferring messages related to solidarity and cooperation during the most devastating pandemic of the 21st century.

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