WHO urges governments to accelerate action to tackle climate crisis on World Health Day
April 7, 2022. 11:11 a.m.
On the occasion of world health daytaking place this Thursday the World Health Organization (WHO) Urgently calls on leaders and everyone to accelerate actions to preserve and protect health and mitigate the climate crisis, as part of the campaign “Our planet, our health”.
Specifically, through its World Health Day initiative, WHO urges governments, organizations, businesses and citizens to share the actions they are taking to protect the planet and human health.
breathe unhealthy air
The WHO recalls that 99% of people breathe unhealthy air mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels. In a warming world, mosquitoes are spreading disease further and faster than ever before.
Extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, land degradation and water scarcity displace people and affect their health. Besides, the pollution and plastics They are found at the bottom of the oceans, in the mountains, and have reached the food chain and the bloodstream, as the WHO warns.
Likewise, systems that produce highly processed and unhealthy foods and beverages are driving a wave of obesity, increasing cancer and heart disease, while generating up to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. This health and social crisis compromises the ability of people to take charge of their health and their lives.
“The climate crisis is a health crisis: the same unsustainable decisions that are killing our planet are killing people,” says WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We need transformative solutions to wean the world from its Dependence on fossil fuels, to reinvent wellness-driven economies and societies and to safeguard the health of the planet on which human health depends,” he added.
Impact of COVID-19
In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted gaps in the inequalities in the world emphasizing the urgency of creating well-being and sustainable societies that do not push ecological boundaries and ensure that all people have access to life-saving and life-enhancing tools, systems, policies and environments.
The WHO Manifesto to ensure a healthy and ecological recovery from Covid-19 prescribes to protect and preserve nature as a source of human health; investing in essential services, from water and sanitation to clean energy in health facilities; ensure a rapid and healthy energy transition; promoting healthy and sustainable food systems; building healthy and livable cities; and stop using taxpayers’ money to fund pollution.
Thus, the Geneva Charter for Well-Being highlights what global commitments are needed to achieve equitable health and social outcomes now and for future generations, without destroying the health of the planet.