World Health Day - 7 April

Every year, World Health Day is celebrated on 7 April to mark the anniversary of the founding of WHO in 1948. Each year a theme is selected that highlights a priority area of public health. The Day provides an opportunity for individuals in every community to get involved in activities that can lead to better health.

World Health Day is a global campaign, inviting everyone – from global leaders to the public in all countries – to focus on a single health challenge with global impact. Focusing on new and emerging health issues, World Health Day provides an opportunity to start collective action to protect people's health and well-being.

World Health Day 2014

The theme for 2014 is vector-borne diseases.

Vectors are small organisms such as mosquitoes, bugs, ticks and freshwater snails, which can carry disease from person to person and place to place. They can put our health at risk, at home and when we travel.

The broad objectives of the World Health Day 2014 are to raise awareness about the threats posed by vectors and vector-borne diseases and to stimulate families and communities to take action to protect themselves.

More broadly, the campaign aims for the following:

families living in areas where diseases are transmitted by vectors know how to protect themselves;
travelers know how to protect themselves from vectors and vector-borne diseases when travelling to countries where these pose a health threat;
in countries where vector-borne diseases are a public health problem, ministries of health put in place measures to improve the protection of their populations; and
in countries where vector-borne diseases are an emerging threat, health authorities work with environmental and relevant authorities locally and in neighbouring countries to improve integrated surveillance of vectors and to take measures to prevent their proliferation.