World Health Organization and Its Role in China
Ren Xiao Li ( ?????/span> )
Law School , Student ID : S06113
Research Paper Suoerviser : Dr. Sekou Conde
Minzhu University of China
2006-2007 Academic Year
Abstract: to study the main role of World Health Organization in China (herein after referred as WHO), the author obtained date from the reports of the WHO from 1996 to 2006 and the articles and reviews of some bibliographic textbooks. This thesis focused on three aspects: AIDS control, avian influenza control and food safety. In the past ten years, China has made substantial achievements in the Public Health, but there still have lots of problems in some areas??/span>especially in the above mentioned three aspects, in view of the situation , the author illustrated the WHO’s far-reaching impact on them and then summarize the remarkable progress in recent years, simultaneously, pointed out the problems that the WHO yet to be resolved, then make some own views, tried to promote WHO to play its role in China.
Key words: health, the World Health Organization, role, China.
??ntroduction
In the 21st century, health is a shared responsibility, and it needs everyone’ efforts. As the leading health organization in the world, WHO should have a far-reaching impact on the status of the international public health. So how does WHO produce marked effect to help the public health in each country is something that deserves more attention, especially in developing countries. In this thesis, the author will take China for example to illustrate the role that WHO plays.
WHO is a specialized agency for health in the United Nations. It was established on April 7, 1948, that we now celebrate every year as World Health Day. It administrative headquarter is in Geneva. By now, it has 193 member states, in which most of its offices are located. [1]And the role of country offices is to provide the technical support to the health projects of the government and to strength the international health network of WHO. It operates through three principal organs: the World Health Assembly, which meets annually as the general policy–making body; an Executive Board of health specialists elected for three-year terms by the assembly; and a secretariat, which has regional offices and field staff throughout the world. In addition, the operation of WHO is decentralized into six geographic areas and China is a member of the Western Pacific Region. The health leaders of the Member Countries meet at their relevant annual Regional Committee Meeting to address regional health issues and to establish regional health policy. This organization is financed primarily from annual contributions made by member governments on the basis of relative ability to pay.
The functions of WHO can be summarized[2]: assisting governments in strengthening health services; establishing and maintaining administrative and technical services, such as epidemiological and statistical services; stimulating the eradication of diseases; improving nutrition, housing, sanitation, working conditions and other aspects of environmental hygiene; promoting cooperation among scientific and professional groups; proposing international conventions and agreements on health matters; conducting research; developing international standards for food, and biological and pharmaceutical products; and developing an informed public opinion among all peoples on matters of health.
As a member of WHO, China now is indispensable. As the most populous nation in the world, China has made great contribution to the world if its public health is improved a lot. China has embraced its responsibility to the global public health including strengthening the surveillance systems to swiftly identify and tackle the threat of infectious diseases??/span>such as SARS and avian influenza. China also has made valuable contributions in making policies on global and regional health. For example, technical experts from China have played an important role in WHO. So, we can say that China is an active, contributive member of WHO. But At the same time, we also see that China still has faced many difficulties in public health; the Chinese government needs the help of WHO. Indeed, WHO plays an important role in China all the time; it has increased its scope of activities significantly in recent years. In a word, the relationship between China and the World Health Organization is more and more intimate. This thesis will focus the most important part of its role in China.
??Its role in China
The role of WHO in China includes many aspects, including the development of the health care systems, support for the health project of the government, AIDS control, maternal and child health, injury prevention, avian influenza control, food safety, environment and health, communicable diseases surveillance and response and so on. In this thesis the author only focus on the following three aspects: AIDS control, avian influenza control and food safety.
??/span>1 The role in AIDS control
As WHO introduces, AIDS represents a kind of a global crisis. Virus is widespread, the threat of which exists in the whole world, and no country can escape from it including China.[3] In 2001, it was reported that the number of AIDS cases in China remained small, but there were AIDS cases in all 31 provinces. During 2005 there were around 70,000 new HIV infections and 25,000 AIDS deaths.[4] In January 2006, estimated by the Chinese government along with the WHO, 650,000 people were living with HIV in China, including about 75,000 AIDS patients. Moreover the numbers of reported HIV prevalence and AIDS cases in china are still rising.
As the biggest specialized international health organization and one of the bigger United Nations agencies,WHO has taken great efforts to solve this problem .In recent years it has produced a marked effect on controlling AIDS in China. It manifested mainly as the following:
Generally speaking, WHO has mainly formulated the following plans in recent years. In 2005, working with the Chinese policymakers, the WHO helped to make the next Five Year Plan (2006-2010) of AIDS in China.[5] In the five years, the WHO plans to control the number of the AIDS patients. Cooperating with the group on AIDS of the United Nations, it also produced the AIDS strategic information framework, which was designed to help the Chinese leadership monitor to progress the China’s AIDS response and to support evidence-based AIDS policies. WHO also planed to strengthen the AIDS networks and optimize resource use in AIDS work across China.
However, the plans on AIDS control drawn up by the WHO are not so specific, and whether they could be made into practice needs the examination of time. We expect the WHO and the Chinese government make more efforts to control AIDS and the plans can be realized in the near future.
In addition, Specifically speaking, WHO has taken integrated measures in AIDS control??/span>
Firstly, WHO took measures on strengthening China’s surveillance systems to track the spread of AIDS, for example, WHO provided supports to China’s AIDS epidemic update and provided the latest information about China’s AIDS situation and government-led response, thus supervise the prevention of AIDS epidemic ,in recent years, with support from WHO, China is developing a consolidated monitoring system that could be combined with the surveillance of AIDS ,other sexually transmitted infections, and behaviors that makes people at risk of infection.
Secondly, WHO provided funds to support China in AIDS control, such as the global fund which was used to fight AIDS specially, Tuberculosis and Malaria .Now in China, three of its AIDS proposals have already gained this support, enabling China to scale up AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support services around the country. In addition, WHO also works with government counterparts at the national and provincial levels to implement the three-year comprehensive AIDS prevention and care project funded by the Swedish International Development Agency.[6]It can be said that, WHO’s funds to China are great contribution to China, a developing country. With the funds, China can continuously improve the medical facilities and train the medical staff, so China can access to affordable medicines and improve quality control, training and management systems for blood products.
Finally??/span>With the Chinese government, the WHO has taken a series of activities to slow the spread of AIDS in the key populous areas at risk. Such as WHO actively supported the expansion of program to increase access to clean needles\syringes as well as drug dependence treatment, supported the scaling-up of the highly successful 100??/span> condom use program to prevent AIDS and also helped to lower the spread of AIDS through advocacy and peer education efforts to encourage behavior change to reduce AIDS risk. These activities are helpful to slow the spread of AIDS in China and now people have a clear understanding of the AIDS epidemic more than ever, the AIDS control has gotten certain achievements.
Although certain achievements has achieved in AIDS control, in the countryside of China, AIDS is still one of the harmful diseases to the people’s health. There are still some problems hindering the progress of controlling AIDS. the main reason is blood-selling??/span>in the rural areas of China, for example, in some countries of Henan, the Pandemic of AIDS is especially serious ,people are very poor and many of them sell blood plasma to make money. In most of blood selling, there would be no tests for [...]
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