World Health Organization

The annual report for the year 1951 by the World Health Organization's Director-General (Chisholm) to the World Health Assembly and the United Nations stated that — while there had been neither any spectacular advances toward the goals of WHO, nor any disquieting setbacks — the year had been characterized by “the gradual but unmistakable development of a ‘world health consciousness’ and by a broadening of the general concept of the right to health”. Among the more important trends in world health, the report noted: 1) the increasing awareness of the importance of health in industrial, agricultural, and general social and economic advancement; 2) the growing emphasis on the education and training of medical personnel and increasing governmental recognition of the importance of WHO's health units and health demonstration areas; 3) the evidence of growing international cooperation in health matters; 4) the continuation, with WHO's help and guidance, of long-term governmental public-health programs and of the important campaigns to educate the masses of the people on questions of public and private health, in order to gain the enthusiastic support without which no amount of national or international planning or action could hope to be successful; and 5) the continuation of efforts toward the mass control of diseases such as yaws, non-venereal infantile syphilis, malaria, tuberculosis, and typhoid. The report also directed attention to WHO's work during 1951 in birth control, particularly through the Regional Committee for South-East Asia; the European influenza epidemic; the direction of health work among the Palestine refugees and the civilian populations in Korea; and the completion of the drafting of the International Sanitary Regulations and their adoption by the fourth World Health Assembly.