Editing World Health Organization (section)

===Origin and founding===
The [[International Sanitary Conferences]] (ISC), the first of which was held on 23 June 1851, were a series of conferences that took place until 1938, about 87 years.<ref name="SanCon">{{Cite book |url=http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf |title=The scientific background of the International Sanitary Conferences, 1851–1938 |last=Howard-Jones |first=Norman |chapter=Introduction |pages=9–11 |publisher=World Health Organization |year=1974 |access-date=3 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170820070452/http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf |archive-date=20 August 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> The first conference, in Paris, was almost solely concerned with [[cholera]], which would remain the disease of major concern for the ISC for most of the 19th century. With the [[cause (medicine)|cause]], origin, and communicability of many epidemic diseases still uncertain and a matter of scientific argument, international agreement on appropriate measures was difficult to reach.<ref name="SanCon"/>
Seven of these international conferences, spanning 41 years, were convened before any resulted in a multi-state international agreement. The seventh conference, in Venice in 1892, finally resulted in a convention. It was concerned only with the sanitary control of shipping traversing the [[Suez Canal]], and was an effort to guard against importation of cholera.<ref name="SanCon7">{{Cite book |url=http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf |title=The scientific background of the International Sanitary Conferences, 1851–1938 |last=Howard-Jones |first=Norman |chapter=The seventh conference: Venice, 1892 |pages=58–65 |publisher=World Health Organization |year=1974 |access-date=3 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170820070452/http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf |archive-date=20 August 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{rp|65}}

Five years later, in 1897, a convention concerning the [[bubonic plague]] was signed by sixteen of the nineteen states attending the Venice conference. While [[Denmark]], [[Sweden-Norway]], and the US did not sign this convention, it was unanimously agreed that the work of the prior conferences should be codified for implementation.<ref name="SanCon10">{{Cite book |url=http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf |title=The scientific background of the International Sanitary Conferences, 1851–1938 |last=Howard-Jones |first=Norman |chapter=The tenth conference: Venice, 1897 |pages=78–80 |publisher=World Health Organization |year=1974 |access-date=3 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170820070452/http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf |archive-date=20 August 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> Subsequent conferences, from 1902 until the final one in 1938, widened the diseases of concern for the ISC, and included discussions of responses to [[yellow fever]], [[brucellosis]], [[leprosy]], [[tuberculosis]], and [[typhoid]].<ref name="SanCon13">{{Cite book |url=http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf |title=The scientific background of the International Sanitary Conferences, 1851–1938 |last=Howard-Jones |first=Norman |chapter=The thirteenth and fourteenth conferences: Paris, 1926 and 1938 |pages=93–98 |publisher=World Health Organization |year=1974 |access-date=3 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170820070452/http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/62873/1/14549_eng.pdf |archive-date=20 August 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> In part as a result of the successes of the Conferences, the [[Pan-American Sanitary Bureau]] (1902), and the {{lang|fr|[[Office International d'Hygiène Publique]]|italic=no}} or "[[International Office of Public Hygiene|International office of Public Hygiene]]" in English (1907) were soon founded. When the [[League of Nations]] was formed in 1920, it established the Health Organization of the League of Nations. After [[World War II]], the [[United Nations]] absorbed all the other health organizations, to form the WHO.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McCarthy |first=Michael |date=October 2002 |title=A brief history of the World Health Organization. |journal=[[The Lancet]] |volume=360 |issue=9340 |pages=1111–1112 |doi=10.1016/s0140-6736(02)11244-x|pmid=12387972 |s2cid=2076539}}</ref>

The WHO has played a crucial role in coordinating the global response to the [[COVID-19]] pandemic, providing essential guidelines on preventive measures, supporting research on vaccines, and facilitating vaccine distribution through initiatives like COVAX.<ref>World Health Organization. (2021). "COVID-19 Dashboard." <nowiki>https://covid19.who.int/</nowiki></ref>