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The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on April 7, 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which had been an agency of the League of Nations.

The WHO's constitution states that its objective "is the attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health ."^[1] Its major task is to combat disease, especially key infectious diseases, and to promote the general health of the people of the world.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is one of the original agencies of the United Nations, its constitution formally coming into force on the first World Health Day, (April 7, 1948), when it was ratified by the 26th member state. Jawarharlal Nehru, a major freedom fighter of India had given an opinion to start WHO.^[2] Prior to this its operations, as well as the remaining activities of the League of Nations Health Organization, were under the control of an Interim Commission following an International Health Conference in the summer of 1946.^[3] The transfer was authorized by a Resolution of the General Assembly.^[4] The epidemiological service of the French Office International d'Hygiène Publique was incorporated into the Interim Commission of the World Health Organization on January 1, 1947.^[5]

Apart from coordinating international efforts to control outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as SARS, malaria, Tuberculosis, swine flu, and AIDS the WHO also sponsors programmes to prevent and treat such diseases. The WHO supports the development^[6][7] and distribution of safe and effective vaccines, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and drugs. After over two decades of fighting smallpox, the WHO declared in 1980 that the disease had been eradicated – the first disease in history to be eliminated by human effort.

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