World Health Organization as a means to reduce traffic-related injuries. The WHO has also worked on global initiatives in surgery, including emergency and essential surgical care, trauma care, and safe surgery. The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is in current use worldwide in the effort to improve patient safety. The World Health Organization's primary objective in natural and man-made emergencies is to coordinate with member states and other stakeholders to "reduce avoidable loss of life and the burden of disease and disability." On 5 May 2014, WHO announced that the spread of polio was a world health emergency – outbreaks of the disease in
Dengue fever outbreaks United States and infect populations that have not been exposed to the virus for several decades. The health risks and rapidly escalating costs to the United States of unmonitored, unvaccinated and disease carrying travelers, legal and illegal, has been recently considered. An outbreak of dengue fever was declared in Cairns, located in the tropical north of Queensland, Australia on 1 December 2008. As of 3 March 2009 there were 503 confirmed cases of dengue fever, in a residential population of 152,137. Outbreaks were subsequently declared the neighbouring cities and towns of Townsville (outbreak declared 5 January 2009), Port Douglas (6