The report first examines the origins of WHO, including its precursor organizations in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the international discussions at the end of the Second World War on the need for a new international health organization, and the setting up of WHO in 1948. It describes how the Organization approached the health problems of that time, how it dealt with the need to decentralize its activities and set up the six WHO regions, and how it established its working methods.
Up to and including the 1960s, the emphasis was on dealing with dangerous infectious diseases. In the 1970s there was more emphasis on the evaluation of developmental progress in general and social progress in particular, including the concept of health development, as distinct from the provision of medical care. A landmark in the development of health policy was the International Conference on Primary Health Care which took place in 1978 in Alma-Ata, following which it was universally recognized that health was a powerful lever for socioeconomic development and peace. In 1981 the Health Assembly adopted the Global Strategy for Health for All by the year 2000 which has since governed the health actions of the Organization and its Member States.
The period since the late 1980s has seen global political and economic upheaval, local civil strife and armed conflict, greater emphasis on market-based economies and democratic reforms, and a reduction in the resources available for international development activities and for national funding for health and social sector problems. These global changes were accompanied by other transitions ( environmental, demographic), that significantly affected health.