What Is Public Health?
Public health sets safety standards to protect workers and develops school nutrition programs to ensure kids have access to healthy food. WHO staff, who include medical doctors, public health specialists, scientists and epidemiologists and other experts are at work on the ground in 149 countries worldwide. They advise ministries of health on technical issues and provide assistance on prevention, treatment and care services throughout the health sector. At the outset, it was decided that WHO’s top priorities would be malaria, women’s and children’s health, tuberculosis, venereal disease, nutrition and environmental pollution. Many of those remain on WHO’s agenda today, in addition to such relatively new diseases as HIV/AIDS, diabetes, cancer and emerging diseases such as SARS , Ebola and Zika virus. International healthcare policy researchers have advocated that "user fees" be removed in these areas to ensure access, although even after removal, significant costs and barrie...