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WHO's emblem was chosen by the First World Health Assembly in 1948. The emblem consists of the United Nations symbol surmounted by a staff with a snake coiling round it.
The staff with the snake has long been a symbol of medicine and the medical profession. It originates from the story of Asclepius, who was revered by the ancient Greeks as a god of healing and whose cult involved the use of snakes. Asclepius, incidentally, was so successful at saving lives that, the legend goes, Hades the god of the underworld complained about him to the supreme god Zeus who, fearing that the healer might make humans immortal, killed Asclepius with a thunderbolt.
