The World Health Day (WHD) to be celebrated on April 7 with the theme of 'Working together for health', is aimed to underline the importance of physical activity to check non-communicable diseases commonly described as the 'afflictions of modern living'.
Each year on April 7, the world celebrates World Health Day. On this day around the globe, thousands of events mark the importance of health for productive and happy lives.
To reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases are among the millennium development goals, which all member states have pledged to meet by the year 2015.
According to the World Health Organisation, more than two million deaths each year are caused by lack of physical activity, which is the leading cause of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and obesity. In most parts of the world non-communicable diseases have become assumed epidemic proportions, due mainly to changing lifestyles involving reduced physical activity, unhealthy diets, tobacco, substance abuse and waning spirituality.
While the trend is universal, its afflictions are more pronounced in the developing countries like ours. Poverty, ignorance, wanting healthcare, violence, overcrowding, pollution and lack of basic facilities, besides breeding communicable diseases also have a direct bearing on the rising incidence of non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, depression, anxiety and osteoporosis. Gender-bias, ever-shifting policy paradigms and changes in social and economic realities are the other culprits.
According to health professionals, over 60 percent of the world population is not physically active enough to gain health benefits and this is especially true for girls and women. Most countries have levels of adult overweight and obesity greater than 30 percent. Countries already battling with the burden of communicable diseases and malnutrition are also unlikely to dodge an epidemic of non-communicable diseases in the near future. These twin epidemics, if left unchecked, may well devastate nations.
Without a strong health workforce, advances in healthcare cannot reach and benefit the people who need them. Effective ways of preventing and treating disease require assessment, delivery and monitoring by health workers, they said.
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