Regional Offices
WHO Member States are grouped into six regions. These regions are organizational groupings and, while they are based on geographical terms, are not synonymous with geographical areas. Note that the WHO regions are not the same as those of the United Nations.
- WHO African Region
- WHO Region for the Americas
- WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region
- WHO European Region
- WHO South-East Asia Region
- WHO Western Pacific Region
Each WHO region has a regional office. Regional offices are actively developing and implementing chronic disease prevention and control strategies in association with country offices as part of WHO's global response to the prevention and control of chronic, noncommunicable diseases. The development of these strategies is at different stages in each region. See below the websites of regional offices for more information on strategies.
Regional Advisers meetings
In response to the rising burden of chronic diseases and the public health challenges that they present, WHO convened a meeting with its NCD Regional Advisers to discuss ways to strengthen collaboration. The meeting was held in WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, from 9 June to 2 July 2004.
The purpose of this meeting was to follow up on several activities first discussed at the NCD Regional Advisors meeting on chronic diseases held in Geneva, Switzerland from June 29 to July 2, 2004. The meeting report is being finalized and it will be available here soon.
The overall objective of the meeting was to provide health promotion Regional Advisers and Focal Points with a valuable opportunity to take stock and to renew attempts for more concerted efforts across the organization in mainstreaming health promotion in order to better serve our Member States in accordance with their requests, regions and WHA resolutions, and to meet present and future challenges.
Specific objectives were to:
The meeting report is being finalized and it will be available here soon.
Regional networks for integrated chronic disease prevention and control
The global strategy for NCD prevention and control adopted by the 53rd World Health Assembly in May 2000 (resolution WHA53.17) calls for the development of networks of national programmes for prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases, in order to disseminate information, exchange experiences, and support regional and national initiatives.
Two networks of community-based NCD prevention programmes, CINDI and CARMEN are well established and are active in European and American countries. Their experience could provide useful guidance to other WHO regions. In particular, their experience indicates that networking facilitates exchange of information and experience on technical and management issues, and helps network members to plan cooperative ventures, brainstorm, and launch new activities.
NCD prevention and control programmes are also emerging as a priority in many developing countries. Accordingly, there is a pressing need to strengthen and link NCD prevention and control initiatives in presently under-served regions. There are, however, encouraging signs in all WHO regions concerning NCD prevention and control initiative and networking efforts.
