World Health Day is a chance to explore and share information about health worldwide.
What is World Health Day?
World Health Day is celebrated yearly on 7th April. World Health Day was originally created at the First Health Assembly in 1948, the celebrations aim to raise awareness of a specific health related theme to highlight an area of concern for the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Over the last 50 years, World Health Day has highlighted important health issues such as mental health, climate change, and maternal and childcare. The theme of World Health Day 2021 is ‘building a fairer, healthier world’.
What is the World Health Organisation?
WHO aims to combat disease to improve international health within the United Nations system. If you’d like to find out more about the World Health Organisation and explore the work they do, check out their website here.
Why is World Health Day important?
World Health Day is particularly important this year and the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted that some people are much more able to live healthier lives due to better access to health care services than others. This health inequality is due to factors such as where people are born, live, grow, work, and age.
Due to poverty worldwide, many people struggle to make ends meet with little to no income, poor housing conditions, lack of accessible education and fewer employment opportunities. Some people have little to no access to safe environments and their basic needs are not met, with little access to nutritious food, clean water, and health services.
All of this leads to unnecessary suffering, avoidable illness, and even premature death. World Health Day 2021 highlights how this is not only very unfair, but that it is also preventable.
How can you get involved in World Health Day?
World Health Day encourages people to call on their countries leaders to ensure that everyone has healthy living and working conditions, as well as access to quality health services worldwide.
You can get involved with World Health Day by encouraging people to read about global disparities in health which you can do on the WHO website. Sharing knowledge and information both online and face to face with your friends, family, and colleagues can also help to increase education about World Health Day.
Additional Information
If you’d like to find out more about health, visit TheSprout’s Your Body Information.
