Public Health Priorities

In this step we’ll start to think about what can be done to address individual country health concerns and what this means for your practice both now and in the future.

The World Health Organization was established in 1948 as the health arm of the United Nations. With 194 member states, its work is to coordinate and direct health. It has seen enormous progress in work it has supported including the eradication of smallpox, working towards polio eradication, reduction in child and maternal mortality, an expanded program on immunisation, along with a reduction in the numbers of cases of tuberculosis and malaria.

The WHO is also involved reactively (in preparedness) with humanitarian aid crises including dealing with Ebola outbreaks. Increasingly now it is working on NCDs via a life course approach and has significant input into surveillance work, monitoring health, and assessing trends.

In 2000, each member state signed up to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015. These were ambitious targets to reduce extreme poverty, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS and malaria, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for health.

Many of these targets were not only met but exceeded and this has had a major impact on the improvements in health you saw when you reviewed the Global Burden of Disease data.

Your task

Look at the government website for your own country. Find the health element and establish answers to these questions:

• Are there any health priorities for your country?
• If so, what are they?
• Are you able to identify whether they are linked to the Sustainable Development Goals?