World Health Organization

The fourteenth session of the Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) was held in New Delhi from February 7 through 24, 1961. In his address the President of the Assembly, Dr. Arcot Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, stated that among the many international organizations set up by the UN, WHO occupied a foremost place in its efforts to improve the conditions of millions of people in all parts of the globe. Dr. Mudaliar pointed to the contributions of the WHO regional offices in bringing the work of the organization more directly into contact with the countries concerned. WHO had achieved its most spectacular successes in programs designed not merely to control but to eradicate diseases of which the causative organisms were well known and with respect to which effective steps could be taken—in this regard Dr. Mudaliar mentioned the malaria eradication campaign. Other diseases of a communicable nature—smallpox, cholera, several of the water-borne diseases, and many others carried by insects—could hopefully lend themselves to similar eradication programs. Dr. Mudaliar also referred to the work of WHO in areas of the world stricken by natural or man-made disaster, and in particular to the organization's emergency work in the Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville). As for the future tasks of WHO, the President of the Assembly observed that although tuberculosis had been one of the four diseases that had been given priority by the first WHO Assembly, much still remained to be done to control it; the results of domiciliary treatment carried out in the city of Madras, India, he continued, gave some promise of success in the control and treatment of the disease. Dr. Mudaliar also singled out leprosy as a disease the organization should try to eradicate, and mentioned the problems of mental illness stemming from the stress and strain of modern society as being worthy of attention.