World Health Day

World Health Day - 7 April

World Health Day 2012

An elderly woman celebrating 100 years with her birthday cake
  • Ageing and health
    Over the past century life expectancy has increased dramatically and the world will soon have more older people than children. Ageing populations occur everywhere, but less-developed countries are witnessing the fastest change. This social transformation represents both challenges and opportunities. In particular, countries may only have a single generation to prepare their health and social systems for an ageing world.

World Health Day 2011

Arrow landing on the bull's-eye of a target
  • Antimicrobial resistance: no action today no cure tomorrow
    We live in an era of medical breakthroughs with new wonder drugs available to treat conditions that a few decades ago, or even a few years ago in the case of HIV/AIDS, would have proved fatal. For World Health Day 2011, WHO will launch a worldwide campaign to safeguard these medicines for future generations. Antimicrobial resistance and its global spread threaten the continued effectiveness of many medicines used today to treat the sick, while at the same time it risks jeopardizing important advances being made against major infectious killers.

World Health Day 2010

People cycle at the city centre in Brussels
  • Urbanization and health
    World Health Day 2010 focused on urbanization and health. With the campaign "1000 cities - 1000 lives", events were organized worldwide calling on cities to open up streets for health activities. Stories of urban health champions were gathered to illustrate what people are doing to improve health in their cities.

World Health Day 2009

World Health Day 2009
  • Save lives. Make hospitals safe in emergencies
    World Health Day 2009 focuses on the resilience and safety of health facilities and the health workers who treat those affected by emergencies. Events around the world will highlight successes, advocate for safe facility design and construction, and build momentum for widespread emergency preparedness.

World Health Day 2008

Displaced people from Sudan's Darfur collecting water in the Gassire camp in eastern Chad.
  • Protecting health from climate change
    In 2008, World Health Day focused on the need to protect health from the adverse effects of climate change. The health impacts of climate change are already evident in different ways. These impacts will be disproportionately greater in vulnerable populations, which include the very young, elderly, medically infirm, poor and isolated populations.

World Health Day 2007

WHO staff and GOARN members at work in the field
  • International health security
    The theme for World Health Day 2007 was international health security, which is the first line of defence against public health emergencies that can devastate people, societies and economies worldwide. The aim was to urge governments, organizations and businesses to "invest in health, build a safer future".

World Health Day 2006

  • Working together for health
    In 2006, World Health Day was devoted to the health workforce crisis. Around the world, there is a chronic shortage of health workers as a result of decades of underinvestment in their education, training, salaries, working environment and management. This is a crisis from which no country is entirely immune.

 

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