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The World Health Assembly, composed of delegates from WHO's 191 Member States, met in Geneva from 11 to 16 May 1998. Mr Shri Saleem Iqbal Shervani of India, President of the Fiftieth World Health Assembly, opened this Fifty-first session. He expressed the view that the efforts of WHO and its Member States can only make an impact if carried out in alliance with others. "Let us carry forward the mission of health for all in the twenty-first century with more vigour", he urged.
The newly elected President of the Fiftyfirst World Health Assembly, Dr F.R. AlMousawi of Bahrain, noted that financial crises had involved cuts in government allocations for health projects and services at a time when demand for them was on the increase, and that many countries had been compelled to look for other sources of funding in order to maintain health services at the levels they had already achieved. "Some countries have faced real hardships in this regard", he said, "which demonstrate that, if the economy is liberalized too quickly, harm can be done to social services in general and to health service coverage rates for the poor and other vulnerable groups in particular".
In his address to the Health Assembly, Dr Hiroshi Nakajima, Director-General of WHO, pointed out that, for the world as a whole, human health had improved more during the last half century than in any other period. This reflected remarkable achievements in the health sector as well as the much wider process of economic and social development. Referring to The world health report 1998 - Life in the 21 st century: a vision for all (see page 335), he said: "We can look forward to a future that holds the promise not merely of longer life but also of better quality of life, with less disease and disability".
Dr Nakajima said that WHO was justly proud of the leading role it had played in helping to make these achievements possible through international cooperation. But he added that international cooperation was not a matter of simply transferring technologies and policies that had been designed for other societies and situations. He recalled that the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care as the way to achieve health for all had...