{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "who",
 "type": "org",
 "names": {
  "name": "World Health Organization",
  "aliases": [
   "WHO",
   "OMS"
  ],
  "said": "The intergovernmental agency, not a non-governmental one — it is the member states, meeting."
 },
 "region": [
  "global",
  "europe-west"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "kind": "ngo",
  "founded": 1948,
  "status": "open"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "The United Nations health agency, established on 7 April 1948 and based in Geneva. Its governing body, the World Health Assembly, is made up of 193 member states. It publishes the Global Health Observatory, the data platform this site draws national health indicators from, and it maintains the health expenditure database the World Bank republishes.",
  "story": "WHO is on this list for what it does not collect. Its indicators come from member states — routine health information systems, civil registration, surveys, facility assessments — and a member state reports what it counts. Almost none of them count foreign patients as a category.\n\nSo the agency that holds the most complete picture of world health holds close to nothing on the flow this site is about. The health expenditure database behind the World Bank series measures what residents consume, which by construction excludes what a country earns treating other countries' residents. *Inference —* an export trade in surgery can be a real industry in a country and still leave no trace in any WHO series, and that absence is a fact about the data, not about the trade.\n\nWhere WHO has acted on cross-border care it has been through ethics and standards rather than statistics: the Guiding Principles on human cell, tissue and organ transplantation, and the official relations it maintains with the fertility registry body ICMART.",
  "how": "Member states report to WHO on agreed instruments and schedules. The Global Health Observatory republishes the results as indicators with country, year and value, reachable through an OData interface. The reporting year differs by country, which is why every value on this site carries its own year.",
  "today": "As of 16 September 2026 the Global Health Observatory remains the source behind several indicators this site charts, and none of them counts a patient who crossed a border for treatment."
 },
 "geo": {
  "lat": 46.2325,
  "lon": 6.14,
  "precision": "street",
  "source": "s:who-wikipedia"
 },
 "address": {
  "street": "Avenue Appia 20",
  "city": "Geneva",
  "country": "CH",
  "postcode": "1211"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "who-global-health-observatory",
   "as": "The data platform it publishes, and what that platform does and does not count.",
   "rel": "measures"
  },
  {
   "to": "world-bank-health-spending",
   "as": "The series the World Bank republishes from WHO's health expenditure database.",
   "rel": "measures"
  },
  {
   "to": "icmart",
   "as": "The fertility registry body it keeps in official relations, and with which it wrote the ART glossary.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "to": "declaration-of-istanbul-group",
   "as": "The professional body whose declaration WHO's transplant principles sit beside.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "to": "what-the-data-cannot-see",
   "as": "Where the gap between world health data and cross-border care is the subject.",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "oecd",
   "as": "The other body with comparable cross-country health figures, and the only one that has tried to measure the trade itself.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "World Health Organization",
   "url": "https://www.who.int/"
  },
  {
   "label": "Global Health Observatory",
   "url": "https://www.who.int/data/gho"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:who-wikipedia",
  "s:who-gho"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:who-wikipedia"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:who-gho",
    "note": "the second paragraph's conclusion is marked as this project's inference; the Guiding Principles are named from general knowledge and are not sourced on this disk"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "The United Nations health agency, established on 7 April 1948 and based in Geneva. Its governing body, the World Health Assembly, is made up of 193 member states.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "global",
   "name": "Everywhere",
   "note": "use for a node that belongs to no one country — a standard, a word, a risk"
  },
  {
   "key": "europe-west",
   "name": "Western Europe",
   "note": "Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK, Switzerland, Austria"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "who-global-health-observatory",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "WHO Global Health Observatory",
   "as": "The data platform it publishes, and what that platform does and does not count.",
   "rel": "measures"
  },
  {
   "to": "world-bank-health-spending",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "Current health expenditure per person",
   "as": "The series the World Bank republishes from WHO's health expenditure database.",
   "rel": "measures"
  },
  {
   "to": "icmart",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "International Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies",
   "as": "The fertility registry body it keeps in official relations, and with which it wrote the ART glossary.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "to": "declaration-of-istanbul-group",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group",
   "as": "The professional body whose declaration WHO's transplant principles sit beside.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "to": "what-the-data-cannot-see",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "What the data cannot see",
   "as": "Where the gap between world health data and cross-border care is the subject.",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "oecd",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development",
   "as": "The other body with comparable cross-country health figures, and the only one that has tried to measure the trade itself.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:who-wikipedia",
   "kind": "wikipedia",
   "title": "World Health Organization",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "established 7 April 1948, Geneva headquarters, World Health Assembly of 193 member states"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:who-gho",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "Global Health Observatory",
   "publisher": "World Health Organization",
   "url": "https://www.who.int/data/gho",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:who-wikipedia"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:who-gho",
   "note": "the second paragraph's conclusion is marked as this project's inference; the Guiding Principles are named from general knowledge and are not sourced on this disk"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:who-wikipedia"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:who-wikipedia"
  },
  "geo": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:who-wikipedia"
  },
  "address": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:who-wikipedia"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "israel",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Israel",
   "as": "The body that counts the permit approvals this page reports.",
   "rel": "measures"
  },
  {
   "from": "bone-marrow-transplant",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Bone marrow transplant",
   "as": "Sets the framework under which donated cells and tissues move between countries.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "kidney-transplant",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Kidney transplant",
   "as": "Guiding Principle 5, endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2010, is the rule the statutes are written against.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "liver-transplant",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Liver transplant",
   "as": "Guiding Principle 5, endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2010, is the rule the national statutes are written against.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "antimicrobial-resistance",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Antimicrobial resistance acquired abroad",
   "as": "Publishes the global surveillance this sits inside.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "blood-supply-safety",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Blood supply safety",
   "as": "Runs the Global Database on Blood Safety, which is the only source for any of this.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "candida-auris",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Candida auris",
   "as": "Lists this organism among its fungal priority pathogens.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "counterfeit-medicines",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Substandard and falsified medicines",
   "as": "Publishes the only figure this record carries.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "abortion-travel-law",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Travelling for a termination",
   "as": "The body whose database is the comparative reading behind most of these rows.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "transplant-prohibition",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Buying an organ, and being transplanted abroad",
   "as": "The body whose Guiding Principles the World Health Assembly endorsed in 2010.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "declaration-of-istanbul-group",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group",
   "as": "The intergovernmental body whose transplant guiding principles this text sits beside.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "icmart",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "International Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies",
   "as": "The body it holds official relations with, and its co-author on the ART glossary.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "oecd",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development",
   "as": "The third partner in the System of Health Accounts.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "covid-shutdown-2020",
   "type": "event",
   "name": "The 2020 shutdown",
   "as": "Whose director-general used the word on 11 March 2020.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "istanbul-declaration-2008",
   "type": "event",
   "name": "The Declaration of Istanbul, 2008",
   "as": "Whose guiding principles on transplantation the declaration sits beside, and whose 10% estimate it cited from a personal communication.",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "who-global-health-observatory",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "WHO Global Health Observatory",
   "as": "The publisher, in its own record.",
   "rel": "org"
  }
 ]
}