World Obesity Day is observed every year on March 04.
Context
World Obesity Day is observed every year on March 04.
- It is observed to spread awareness about obesity and encourage action towards its elimination.
History
- World Obesity Day goes way back to the year 2015, wherein a non-profit organisation worked closely with World Health Organisation and Lancet Commission in helping spread awareness.
- Later in 2016, the focus was shifted to childhood obesity, while later in 2017, the idea was to treat obesity now and avoid consequences later.
Theme
- The theme of World Obesity Day 2022 is ‘Everybody Needs to Act’.
- The campaign aims to improve the world’s understanding, prevention and treatment of obesity.
- In 2021, ‘Everybody Needs Everybody’ was the chosen theme and the campaign that year turned out to be a huge success.
Significance
- According to the World Health Organisation, obesity rates have nearly tripled since 1975 and have seen a significant increase of almost five times in children and adolescents.
- It is affecting people of all ages from all social groups, in both developed and developing countries.
- Obesity is one of the biggest health crises in the world, affecting 800 million people with millions more at risk, according to worldobesity.org.
- Additionally, people with obesity also experience constant shaming and blaming by many due to the lack of awareness about the disease.
- As such, it is extremely crucial to spread awareness about obesity, which is steadily becoming the biggest health challenge worldwide.
- To spread awareness about the same and encourage action towards its elimination.
World Health Organisation (WHO)
- The World Health Organisation (WHO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations that looks into matters of public health.
- It was Established on April 7th, 1948, (a date now being celebrated every year as World Health Day).
- Its headquarters is located in Geneva, Switzerland.
- There are 194 Member States, 150 country offices, six regional offices.
- It is an intergovernmental organisation and works in collaboration with its member states usually through the Ministries of Health.
- The WHO provides leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
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