THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION AND GLOBAL HEALTH

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION AND GLOBAL HEALTH

            The most striking thing about the readings we’ve done in the last ten days is how everything is about Global Health. It really interesting to see how global health and the World Health Organization are mainly controlled by the developed countries e.g.: United States, Europe and the Soviet Union. These developed nations are the ones who make the rules and regulations that for the most part favor their own personal interests, and hurt the interests of the other less developed countries. A perfect example is shown in this week’s article “The WHO transition from International to Global Health” when United States and other developed countries in the WHO took full dominance of the organization in 1949 after the Soviet Union and other communist countries left the organization. America found a way to quickly dominate the WHO in 1949 and by the time the Soviet Union joined the UN and WHO in 1956, the US had already used the WHO to favor their country’s personal interest.

            I will not refuse to give credit to the WHO because they have really helped third world countries in the control and treatment of diseases like AIDS, Malaria, Small pox and Polio, but at the same time I personally feel like they could have done more. If you closely look at the WHO, yes it’s meant to serve and meet the problems of all nations in the world, but is certainly does the opposite. The WHO is just a way of developed countries to enforce power over developing and undeveloped nations. It’s like a form of slavery in a way. The developed nations (mostly white) form the guidelines, set the rules and force other nation to live by these rules and follow them. Developed countries are the ones who determine what is wrong or right in terms of health care and make the whole world believe that their ways are correct.

           

            The image above clearly shows that the whole world is judged by the standards of a small group of people. This group of people (developed countries) is the one that determine the world’s health care, and that the whole world is forced to do things their way or the high way. Which leads me to another thought; the World Bank. The World Bank was mainly created so that nations can borrow money from it during times of need. The World Bank which is mostly governed by developed countries, mainly loans most of its money to undeveloped and developing countries that were mainly colonized by the developed countries. Most of these third world countries borrow and will continue borrowing money form the World Bank because after their colonizers left, and they gained independence, they had a hard time starting over and learning to govern their countries and do things on their own. When colonizers like the British, Dutch, French and Portuguese colonized their colonies, all they did was use all their colonies resources (human labor, gold, oil and plantation) to benefit themselves, and as a result, they got richer, why their colonies for the most part did not benefit at all. After their colonies gained independence, their colonies were left with the hard task of figuring out how to use their lands resources, and that took a long time to figure out. Most colonies gained independence in the 1960, and up to date, they are still trying to figure out how to govern themselves.

            So for the most part third world countries will always owe the World Bank millions of money in loans, and the developed countries will always have power over global health because they are the main contributors to the World Health Organization, and as much as I hate to say this, developed countries will forever reign superior over the whole world. That’s just the plain truth.

            Global Health is just a word that was coined in order to make the world believe that the World Health Organization is all for one and one for all. But in actual sense, global health is not a universal movement because it has major actors who are: - the World Bank, WHO, private organizations and philanthropists (westerners), who will always be at the top food chain of global health.