April 7, World Health Day, the key is that it is a right

In 1948 the World Health Organization established April 7 as World Health Day. Since then, different slogans have been chosen annually that focus on important aspects when promoting this intangible asset of incalculable value.

In 2024 the chosen one has been “My health, my right” and its purpose is to convey that the two concepts cannot be dissociated since the development of society, of humanity, requires joint recognition of both. Talking about health means talking about drinking water, clean air, good nutrition, quality housing, decent working and environmental conditions, and absence of discrimination. 

At The network of healthcare centers that the Mutua has are the first step in the scenario where this care begins, promoted by approximately a thousand health professionals.  

According to the WHO “the right to health of millions of people is increasingly threatened throughout the world and diseases and disasters loom as the main causes of death and disability.” Likewise, wars are a key destabilizing element in the attempt to make health accessible. Furthermore, well-known climate threats, such as the burning of fossil fuels or air pollution, limit access to this universal right.  

The Sustainable Development Goals also dedicate an important part of their content to the promotion of health care, due to its vital importance for human development, and four of the eight Millennium Development Goals are also directly related to health, specifically, with purposes such as alleviating hunger, promoting maternal and child health and promoting solutions to cure HIV and malaria. If we have come this far, to these specific requests, it is because there are others already consolidated, or on the way to being so, such as progress in the treatment of tuberculosis.

The WHO Council on the Economic Aspects of Health for All lists 140 countries that recognize health as a human right in their constitution, but some of them lack laws that guarantee their populations the right to access health services. 

The common objective is, therefore, the democratization and universalization of a key basic right, which we summarize in this video.