Every year World Health Day is celebrated on 7th April which is the day World Health Organization was born or came into existence. The World Health Day is based on a theme selected by World Health Organization and the theme of 2010 World Health Day is “Urbanization: a challenge for public health” and the World Health Day 2010 campaign is “1000 cities, 1000 lives”.

Why the theme?

The World Health Organization select a theme based on the importance of the particular subject and this year’s theme was selected to give importance to the public health problems of the cities across the globe. At present context the subject of healthy cities is very important as more than 50% of world population live in cities. In the year 2007 itself more than half of the world population started living in the cities, which is only growing and it is estimated that by 2030 more than 60% of the world population will reside in cities. Here lies the importance of urban health and so the World Health Day theme. At present more than 3 billion people live in cities.

About this year’s theme:

Most of the growth in world population for the coming decades will be in the cities. Urbanization is linked with water, environment, diseases (communicable as well as non communicable diseases), unhealthy dietary habits, tobacco and alcohol use, sedentary lifestyle, and many other health related problems. The reasons of urban health problems are because urban poor suffer from diseases of wide range, from domestic violence to communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The major determinants of health in urban areas are beyond the health sector.

2010 World Health Day campaign (7-11 April): 1000 cities, 1000 lives

The goals of World Health Day campaign 2010 are:

• Clean-up campaign, health activities in parks and other public places etc. in 1000 cities.
• To collect 1000 stories of urban health champions who have taken action to improve health of their cities and had significant impact of health in their cities.

Let us join hands to improve the health of our cities and share our stories with the people around the globe (the global village). So let’s get involved and tell the world what is happening in our cities about improving health of my/your city.

Let’s join the global movement to make our cities healthier.