The Work of WHO, 1980-1981: Biennial Report of the Director-General to the World Health Assembly and to the United Nations

In about 250 pages of text this account of the activities, concerns, and responsibilities of the World Health Organization during a two-year period is a miracle of compression. Progress is real and evident. In the whole of Latin America during the decade of the 1970s, the yearly mortality rate of children aged 1 through 4 years dropped from 815 to 4.3. Sometimes the meaning is almost squeezed out of the account—tables refer to mean data for whole regions of the earth, with footnoted comments on the effects on a single line if, for example, the data for China are excluded. WHO is a major bureaucracy, and something of the mandarin's detachment comes through. Failure is disappointing; progress falls short of expectations. Occasionally the comment is blunt: referring to the problems of the states bordering South Africa, the text comments that their social and health situation remains precarious because of South