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
2013–2014 Zika virus outbreaks in Oceania 2013–2014 Zika virus outbreaks in Oceania In October 2013, there was an outbreak of Zika fever in French Polynesia, the first outbreak of several Zika outbreaks across Oceania. With 8,723 cases reported, it was the largest outbreak of Zika fever before the outbreak in the Americas that began in April 2015. An earlier outbreak occurred on Yap Island in the Federated States of Micronesia in 2007, but it is thought that the 2013–2014 outbreak involved an independent introduction of the Zika virus from Southeast Asia. Investigators suggested that the outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases in the Pacific from 2012 to 2014