World Health Organization

• 1. Introduction

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  The World Health Organization sits at the center of every major global health crisis of the modern era. It was the body that declared COVID-19 a pandemic on the 11th of March 2020. It is the agency that formally certified smallpox eradicated in 1979, the first disease in human history to be eliminated by human effort. And it is the institution that, on the 22nd of January 2026, lost its largest funder when the United States formally withdrew from its ranks. How did an organization born from the wreckage of World War II become the world's foremost health authority? And what happens when that authority is tested by political rupture, financial crisis, and pandemic-scale failure? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. A Century of Sanitary Conferences

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  On the 23rd of June 1851, delegates gathered in Paris for the first International Sanitary Conference, focused almost entirely on cholera. Over the next 87 years, a series of such conferences took place, struggling to build common ground on diseases whose causes and transmission were still matters of active scientific debate. Seven conferences spanning 41 years passed before any produced a binding multi-state agreement. That breakthrough came in Venice in 1892, when a convention was finally signed, covering only the sanitary control of shipping through the Suez Canal. Five years later, in 1897, sixteen of the nineteen states at a follow-up Venice conference signed a convention on bubonic plague. Denmark, Sweden-Norway, and the United States did not sign it, though all parties agreed the prior conferences' work should be codified. The scope widened with each successive gathering. By the time the final conference was held in 1938, discussions had expanded to include yellow fever, brucellosis, leprosy, tuberculosis, and typhoid. Out of these decades of negotiation grew two permanent bodies: the Pan American Sanitary Bureau in 1902 and the Office International d'Hygiène Publique in 1907. When the League of Nations formed in 1920, it added a third: the Health Organization of the League of Nations. These three bodies were eventually folded into the new WHO after World War II, carrying their assets, personnel, and records with them, including the International Classification of Diseases.

• 3. The Founding Bargain

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  Szeming Sze, a delegate from the Republic of China, raised the idea at the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization. He consulted with Norwegian and Brazilian delegates on creating a new international health body under the UN's auspices. When a resolution failed to gain traction, Alger Hiss, the conference's secretary general, suggested using a declaration instead. That declaration passed, calling for an international conference on health. The deliberate choice of the word "world" over "international" in the organization's name was meant to signal the truly global scope of its ambitions. On the 22nd of July 1946, the constitution of the World Health Organization was signed by all 51 UN member states and by 10 additional countries, making it the first specialized UN agency to which every member subscribed. Arcot Ramaswamy Mudaliar, serving as the first president of the UN Economic and Social Council, played a central role in shepherding the process. The constitution came into force on the 7th of April 1948, the day the 26th member state ratified it, and that date became the first World Health Day. The WHO formally began operations on the 1st of September 1948. G. Brock Chisholm became the first director-general, while Andrija Stampar served as president of the first World Health Assembly. Their initial budget, secured when the first assembly concluded on the 24th of July 1948, was allocated for 1949. First priorities included controlling malaria, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted infections, alongside improvements in maternal and child health and environmental hygiene. The agency's real operational momentum only arrived in 1951, after a significant infusion of financial and technical resources.

• 4. The Smallpox Campaign

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  Viktor Zhdanov, Deputy Minister of Health of the Soviet Union, stood before the World Health Assembly in 1958 and urged a global campaign to eradicate smallpox. His appeal led to the adoption of Resolution WHA11.54. By 1967, the WHO had intensified the effort, contributing $2.4 million annually and deploying new surveillance methods at a time when 2 million people were dying of smallpox each year. The chief obstacle was underreporting. Countries often failed to record cases accurately, leaving outbreaks invisible until they had spread. The WHO responded by building a network of consultants to help national governments implement surveillance and containment. The organization also managed the last European outbreak of the disease, which occurred in Yugoslavia in 1972. After more than two decades of sustained effort, a Global Commission declared in 1979 that smallpox had been eradicated. The 1998 WHO director-general, marking the organization's fiftieth anniversary, pointed to smallpox eradication alongside reduced infant mortality and increased life expectancy as the clearest evidence of what the agency had achieved. The smallpox campaign's vertical structure, which bypassed regional offices to operate with direct central command, became a model. Disease-specific programs like the 1980s Global Programme on AIDS later followed the same approach, precisely because the regional office structure had historically been criticized for slowing the organization's effectiveness.

• 5. Emergencies and Their Limits

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  On the 8th of August 2014, the WHO declared the West Africa Ebola outbreak a public health emergency. The disease, believed to have started in Guinea, had spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The response that followed exposed deep structural problems. An internal report pointed to underfunding and the absence of core health system capacity in affected countries as the primary weaknesses. Critics argued the organization had been reduced to an advisory role by a decade of budget cuts. In response, Director-General Margaret Chan announced at the 2015 World Health Assembly a $100 million contingency fund for rapid response to future emergencies; by April 2016, $26.9 million had been received. An additional $494 million was budgeted for the new Health Emergencies Programme for 2016-17, of which $140 million had arrived by April 2016. The Ebola crisis also produced an institutional redesign. In 2016, the World Health Emergencies Programme was created to shift the WHO from a purely standard-setting body toward one capable of direct operational response. The same year, the Global Action Plan for Influenza Vaccines concluded after a decade of work with a frank assessment: while substantial progress had been made, the world was still not ready to respond to an influenza pandemic. That assessment would prove prescient when, on the 1st of January 2020, the WHO created an Incident Management Support Team after Chinese health authorities reported a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause, setting in motion the response to what would become COVID-19.

• 6. Funding, Power, and the American Exit

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  In 2020-21, the largest contributors to the WHO's budget were Germany, the Gates Foundation, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the European Commission. The United States had historically been the biggest funder, contributing about 18% of the total budget. On the 14th of April 2020, President Donald Trump announced he would halt US funding, accusing the organization of mismanaging the COVID-19 response. On the 7th of July 2020, he formally notified the UN of his intent to withdraw. His successor, Joe Biden, cancelled that withdrawal after his inauguration on the 20th of January 2021. Then, on the 20th of January 2025, during Trump's second term, a new executive order initiated withdrawal again. The United States officially left the World Health Organization on the 22nd of January 2026, the first time in the organization's history that any member state had done so. The US disputed that it owed approximately $260 million in outstanding fees before departing. The withdrawal triggered a financial crisis: major budget cuts followed, the management team was halved, and plans were drawn up to reduce staff by roughly one quarter. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated publicly that the withdrawal would make both the United States and the rest of the world less safe. On the 23rd of January 2026, the US state of California announced it would join the WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, becoming the first US state to do so.

• 7. Taiwan and Political Pressure

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  The Republic of China was a founding member of the WHO, representing "China" from the organization's inception. When the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 2758 in 1971, the representation of "China" transferred to the People's Republic of China, and Taiwan was expelled from the WHO and other UN bodies. For nearly four decades, Taiwan had no presence. In May 2009, the Department of Health of the Republic of China was invited to attend the 62nd World Health Assembly as an observer under the name "Chinese Taipei," the first such participation since 1971. The invitation followed improved cross-strait relations after Ma Ying-jeou became the Republic of China's president the previous year. When elections in 2016 brought the Democratic Progressive Party back to power, Taiwan's participation ended under pressure from Beijing. From 2017 to 2020, WHO refused to allow Taiwanese delegates to attend the annual assembly. In May 2018, Taiwanese media were denied access to the annual assembly, reportedly at the PRC's request. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan's widely praised response drew new international calls for its readmission. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe both voiced support. Members of the United States House of Representatives wrote directly to the director-general to argue for Taiwan's inclusion. The PRC consistently dismissed those calls. In November 2020, the word "Taiwan" was blocked in comments on a livestream on the WHO's Facebook page, an episode that drew attention to the extent of Beijing's influence within the organization.