Avenue Apia, on the outskirts of Geneva.

On February 6th, 2018, a group of 30 world-renowned experts gathered at the headquarters of the

WHO.

Their goal?

To review the list of priority diseases, that is to say the most dangerous viruses at present,

for which no effective diagnostic tests exist, nor vaccines or other treatments, those which

have the highest potential to cause an epidemic.

To assemble this list, the group compared facts, research data, number of outbreaks,

possible responses and more.

At the end of their meeting, they had identified diseases like the Ebola virus disease, Middle

East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, and severe acute respiratory syndrome,

also known as SARS.

New to the list was disease X, representing, quote, a serious international epidemic caused

by a pathogen currently unknown, end quote.

The disease X variable was a breakthrough in the way the WHO produces knowledge.

Disease X was expected to work as a heuristic tool, accelerating research and developing

medical responses to a potential pandemic.

Yet the 2020 global outbreak of COVID-19 could not be prevented, and the WHO has been scrutinized

harshly for its handling of the pandemic.

On July 7, 2020, the US administration notified the United Nations that the country was going

to withdraw from the WHO.

If nothing else, the pandemic has proved that the issue of health is central in national

foreign policies.

Health can be used as a diplomatic tool in international relations.

As the WHO argued in 2014, quote, the role of diplomacy in health is vital.

Global health needs global health diplomacy, end quote.

But what does this mean for battling lethal diseases on a global scale?

And how did the WHO become the key player in health diplomacy?

Let's look back to the origins of this idea for a transnational organization for global

health, which emerged in the shadow of a pandemic.

Whether smallpox or the plague, HIV or even the flu, humans have experienced a series

of pandemics with devastating health results.

The cholera pandemic from 1817 is just one example.

It was the first of six cholera outbreaks between 1817 and 1917, just 100 years.

It exploded in British India and spread through Russia, China and the Middle East across to

West Africa.

In India alone, it is estimated that one to two million people died.

By 1832, during the second pandemic, the disease had traveled across Russia to Western Europe

and England and had reached the Americas.

The disease created and aggravated social issues.

In Russia, the poor protested quarantine restrictions that hindered their ability to work and survive.

Paris, like many other capital cities in Europe, was growing fast at that time, so fast actually,

that it outpaced its administrative capacities and could literally not bury its dead.

Cholera spread especially easily in the crowded and deprived parts of the city, where the

poorer residents lived.

They suffered the most.

Here, history shows us why pandemics need to be taken seriously.

They do not respect national borders, and they affect more than just human health.

They can also immobilize trade, amplify social inequality and intensify political strains.

In short, they have a significant impact on political systems and economies.