ABSTRACT
Global health collaboration was very weak from the beginning of the 20th century through to the 1980s. The inadequacies of early international collaboration were due to a number of factors. One was the weaknesses in the health systems of developing countries in that they often could not detect disease outbreaks, and they could not implement disease control policies on carriers and in ports and inland areas. Throughout the millennia of human history there has been very little politics of international health. For a long time, humans did not have sufficient medical knowledge to understand disease pathogens and propose remedial and preventive measures. The first major disease control convention, the International Health Regulations (IHR), was adopted in 1903. In 1946 a major institutional change occurred in the realm of global health governance when the United Nations created the World Health Organization (WHO) as a specialised UN agency. A surfeit of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) active in the health aid field has developed.
