Iran Press/ Iran News: The event welcomed students in different fields of health and medicine at the university, as well as experts and specialists from a myriad of backgrounds, and provided a platform for keynote speeches by WHO Representative and Head of Mission in Iran Syed Jaffar Hussain, University Chancellor Alireza Zali, and Deputy Minister for Public Health Kamal Heidari.
World Health Day is seen each year as an opportunity by governments and organizations to draw worldwide attention to a subject of major importance to global health, including the Islamic Republic of Iran. The joint commemoration of the global occasion, held to mark WHO's founding, will continue through a number of initiatives and events that officially commence on the 7th and run until the last week of April.
"We need to highlight operationalizing health in all policies, strengthening the partnership of health and non-health sectors, focusing on political, economic, and social drivers and their impact on health and well-being," said Hussain in his speech. "Our vision in the region is Health for all by all and this is not achievable without the intersectoral collaboration of all sectors."
Under the theme 'Our Planet, Our Health' for this year's World Health Day, WHO is focusing global attention on urgent actions needed to keep humans and the planet healthy and foster a movement to create societies focused on well-being in the midst of a pandemic, a polluted planet, increasing diseases like cancer, asthma, and heart disease.
According to WHO, more than 13 million deaths around the world each year are due to avoidable environmental causes, which are responsible for 23% of the total burden of disease in the Eastern Mediterranean Region and as much as 30% of the disease burden for children.
An estimated 1 million people die prematurely every year in the Eastern Mediterranean Region due to living and working in unhealthy environments.
"Countries can achieve health equity by changing policies to give everyone an equal opportunity for being healthy, empowerment and engagement of communities, vulnerable and marginalized and affected population in decision making and implementation of solutions, to ensure timeliness and reliability of data to identify inequalities and evidence-based policy and decision making, having an inclusive vision and acting beyond borders," Hussain underlined.
Throughout the National Health Week (24-31 April), WHO will support the ministry of health in organizing coordinated meetings between UN agencies to discuss and consolidate ongoing efforts for climate and health, health promotion events on the sidelines, and encourage other plans and pledges by government and non-governmental organizations across the country to prompt political commitment for action and community engagement for impact.
WHO Regional Director Ahmed Al-Mandhari, for his part, stressed the critical need to tackle these challenges by addressing the root causes of ill health.
"Many aspects of environmental health go far beyond the health sector, so concerted action by many different actors across different sectors is required, focusing on upstream interventions to prevent, minimize or mitigate environmental risks," he said in his message for the occasion.
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