World Health Day

Forty years have elapsed since men and women, of goodwill and foresight laid the foundations of the World Health Organization.

For the first time in history there would be a truly global cooperative enterprise to protect and promote human health. Health is rightly defined in the WHO Constitution as not merely the absence of disease or infirmity but as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. Remarkable progress had been made in science, technology and medicine. Sufficient knowhow and expertise become available to ensure health care for all the inhabitants of our plants. There is, however, a wide gulf between the health “haves” and the health “have nots”. We unfortunately are still not equals in health on our Spaceship Earth. Average life expectancy fluctuates between over 70 in some countries to barely 50 in others.

In most developing countries, from nearly 100 to more than 200 out of 1,000 infants born alive die during their first year, although industrialized countries have succeeded in bringing this rate down to between 10 and 20, and even less. Women in most poor countries have a 200 times greater risk of dying during pregnancy and delivery than women in rich countries.

So, it has become a matter of equity and social justice to make health, progress, available to all people through new approaches, new strategies and better management of available resources. Within WHO, 166 Member States are now unanimously committed to health for all°. a strategy firmly anchored on four basics ‘pillars.

1. Technology – not necessarily sophisticated but appropriate technology; and by appropriate not only scientifically sound but socially acceptable and economically affordable.
2. Political will to improve health so as to enable people to lead economically productive and socially rewarding lives.
3. Health sector cooperation with other key development areas such as education, agriculture, industry and information.
4. Last, but by no means least, community and individual participation in the quest for better health. All for health by the year 2000.

The Alma-ata Declaration on primary health care, now 10 years old clearly mapped the road we are firmly engaged in. It is along this road that. should go forward, all of us, men and women everywhere who are not only the objects of development but are in fact the very subjects of that development and quite particularly of health development; men women active in education, agriculture, industry, information and so many other different walks of life, who understand the mutually beneficial effects of development, in harmony with the protection and promotion of good health.

People everywhere, including top-level political and spiritual leaders from north and south, east and west are acknowledging over and above all their differences that health is good for all people and essential for human progress, that there is both economic value and social justice in health. Health is everything, but that there is nothing without health. the interest of the h ft an race there must be Health for All and All for health.