Who Can Change Your Future Travel Decisions? The WHO, That’s Who.
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 07.16.03 | 10:09 PM ET
That’s WHO as in the World Health Organization. As a compelling Los Angeles Times article on Sunday explains, the organization has undergone big changes in recent years that have made it a major player on the world travel scene. Its response to the recent SARS outbreak had a dramatic effect on global travel. Reporter Charles Piller explains just how that came to be, and how the organization operates these days. “The doctors and scientists begin at 9 a.m. sharp, filing into room M405 at the World Health Organization’s headquarters,” he writes. “They crowd around a conference table surrounded by computers churning the latest data on diseases from every corner of the globe. This is the daily outbreak meeting, and the first case for discussion is an unknown fever in South Asia that has killed 34 children with severe diarrhea and convulsions.”