Editing History of medicine (section)

==== World Health Organization ====
[[File:Fighting smallpox in Niger, 1969.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Smallpox]] vaccination in Niger, 1969. A decade later, this was the first infectious disease to be eradicated.]]The [[World Health Organization]] was founded in 1948 as a United Nations agency to improve [[global health]]. In most of the world, [[life expectancy]] has improved since then, and was about 67 years {{as of|2010|lc=y}}, and well above 80 years in some countries. [[Eradication of infectious diseases]] is an international effort, and several new [[vaccine]]s have been developed during the post-war years, against infections such as [[measles]], [[mumps]], several strains of [[influenza]] and [[human papilloma virus]]. The long-known vaccine against [[Smallpox]] finally eradicated the disease in the 1970s, and [[Rinderpest]] was wiped out in 2011. [[Eradication of polio]] is underway. [[Tissue culture]] is important for development of vaccines. Despite the early success of antiviral vaccines and antibacterial drugs, [[antiviral drugs]] were not introduced until the 1970s. Through the WHO, the international community has developed a response protocol against epidemics, displayed during the [[SARS]] epidemic in 2003, the [[Influenza A virus subtype H5N1]] from 2004, the [[Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa]] and onwards.
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