World Health Organization (WHO)

The thirty-sixth World Health Assembly met at Geneva from 2 to 16 May 1983 and approved a wide-ranging programme of activities in support of the plan of action for attaining health for all by the year 2000, approved in 1982.a The Assembly also endorsed the findings of an international committee of experts on the probable effects of nuclear war. The committee had concluded that it was impossible to prepare health services to deal in any systematic way with a catastrophe resulting from nuclear warfare, and that nuclear weapons constituted the greatest immediate threat to the health and welfare of mankind. Members of the committee included physicists, physicians, geneticists, epidemiologists, and experts in public health, nuclear medicine and biology, radiopathology, radiation protection, burn injuries and plastic surgery. The Assembly urged the member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) to give careful consideration to the committee’s conclusions, and requested the Director-General to publish the committee’s report to ensure that it received wide publicity.

Sustainable Development Goals:

Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Partnerships for the Goals