What and When Is World Health Day?
The World Health Day is a day set aside annually for global health awareness. The organizers of the World Health Day are the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO is a part of the United Nations (UN) charged with the mandate to oversee the health of people all over the world. The first World Health Day took place in 1948. At first, the celebration was to commemorate the creation of WHO. Besides World Health Day, the other health-focused events observed by WHO are World AIDS Day, World Blood Donor Day, World Immunization Day, and World Hepatitis Day. All these days focus on the improvement of global health. This year's World Health Day was celebrated on April 7, 2018 and marked 70 years since the first celebration of World Health Day.
Themes Of World Health Days
Many years ago, WHO began the practice of assigning a theme to each World Health Day. The aim of this strategy was to ensure that the event became more objective than it was previously. Some of the World Health Day themes for previous celebrations include Eradication of Polio (1995), Focus on Mental Health (2001), Living healthy resulting in a long life (2012), Food Safety (2015), Diabetes (2016), and Depression (2017). The theme for the year 2018’s World Health Day is Universal Health Coverage. These World Health Day’s themes have made it possible for WHO to unite the whole world to address health concerns.
Universal Health Coverage: 2018 World Health Day Theme
The theme of World Health Day 2018, Universal Health Coverage, is timely. According to the WHO facts sheet, half of the world’s population does not have access to essential health care services. Furthermore, to pay for health bills due to unexpected illnesses, most people must utilize their savings or sell their assets. Consequently, such households get deeper into poverty. Hence, the idea of championing for Universal Health Coverage is to encourage governments to make quality health care affordable and accessible to all people. They can do so by facilitating construction and equipment of modern hospitals. Also, they can employ adequate health workers to work in the health facilities.
Governments, Non-Governmental Organizations, and willing individuals can team up to make WHO’s vision a reality. Doing so will enable countries all over the world to provide one billion more people with access to proper healthcare by 2023. On its Twitter page, WHO discussions concerning the 2018 World Health Day have been dubbed #HealthForAll. The call for Universal Health Coverage is an important one for all humans worldwide.
Importance Of World Health Day
The first advantage of having the World Health Day is that it gives the world an opportunity to rethink and raise awareness about one specific health issue. Secondly, it is an excellent opportunity to seek the support of all nations to tackle global health challenges. Thirdly, World Health Day provides an opportunity to WHO to monitor its progress over the years concerning health matters. Hence, it is a time to celebrate achievements and keep working on the issues yet to be resolved.
