World Health Day 2021

April 7th, 2021 is World Health Day. The World Health Organization (WHO) invites everyone to join in on a world-wide campaign to build a fairer, healthier world. WHO is calling for actions to eliminate health inequities. This campaign highlights the principle WHO created that “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic, or social condition.”1

If this global pandemic has shown anything, it that many people are able to live healthier lives and have better access to health care compared to others. This is mainly due to the circumstances in which they were born, live and work in. Across the globe there are groups that live in poor housing conditions, lack of adequate education, few job opportunities, food insecurity and lack of clean water and air. Many of these conditions are preventable.

The WHO is committed to ensuring that everyone can realize the right to good health, so this is why they engage with, and call upon world leaders to ensure their people have living and working conditions that can lead to good health. Communities need to be included in the room when decisions are being made for them so that they can advocate for themselves.COVID-19 has hit the global community hard, but it has impacted communities that were already vulnerable before this pandemic the hardest. Health inequities threaten the advances made and can help widen the equity gap further than it already is.

Resources

https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2021

https://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/767501596721696943/Profiles-of-the-new-poor-due-to-the-COVID-19-pandemic.pdf