61st World Health Assembly
Global Health Leaders Tackle Top Issues

The 61st World Health Assembly, meeting in Geneva in May, endorsed a six-year action plan to tackle what it called the leading threat to human health: chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, which cause some 60 percent of deaths worldwide.

Low- and middle-income countries are most heavily affected by these diseases, which are largely preventable by controlling four common risk factors: tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and harmful use of alcohol.

Minister of Health of Guyana Leslie Ramsammy, who served as president of this year's assembly, said that chronic diseases should have been included in the Millennium Development Goals. "I believe that this is a serious omission, and this anomaly should be corrected," he said.

The assembly, which drew a record 2,704 participants from 190 member countries of the World Health Organization (WHO), also approved a new Strategy on Public Health, Innovation, and Intellectual Property, which promotes new approaches to pharmaceutical research and development and seeks to increase access to medicines.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said of the strategy, "This is a major breakthrough for public health that will benefit many millions of people for many years to come. This is a contribution to fairness in health, and this is pro-active public health at its very best."

The strategy notes that communicable diseases account for approximately 50 percent of the burden of disease in developing countries and that poverty makes it difficult for them to access medicines, vaccines, and other health products needed to fight these diseases. Market incentives are insufficient, it says, to ensure that research and development result in more accessible health products. For this reason, the strategy calls for "needs-driven essential health research and development." It also calls for strengthening developing countries' capacities to use the flexibilities contained in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to increase their access to pharmaceutical products.

Among other actions, the World Health Assembly also reaffirmed its commitment to eradicating polio and preparing for an influenza pandemic. It directed WHO to help countries reach higher immunization coverage and to encourage the development of new vaccines, noting that while vaccines prevent 2–3 million deaths per year, they are still underutilized.

Delegates also asked WHO to intensify its work to curb harmful use of alcohol, the fifthleading risk factor for death and disability in the world, and to consult with intergovernmental organizations, health professionals, nongovernmental organizations, and others on ways they can contribute to reducing harmful alcohol use.

Echoing the theme of this year's World Health Day, theWorld HealthAssembly urged action to protect health from climate change, calling on WHO to develop and strengthen the evidence base on the links between climate change and health, and to help developing countries in particular address the health impacts of climate change.

Other resolutions called for stepped-up action to eliminate female genital mutilation and to improve the health of millions of migrants around the world.

This year's assembly marked WHO's 60th anniversary (see box, left). "The World Health Organization was established 60 years ago," Chan noted. "The landscape of public health is vastly different now. WHO is not alone in the drive to improve health. Leadership is not mandated; it is earned. This is a time of unprecedented global interest and investment in health. But it is also a time of unprecedented challenges."