Thank You, World Health Organization!

The World Health Organization has long been a leader in matters of public health, from its successes against such dreaded diseases as smallpox to its campaign to control tobacco. Its new Health and Ageing Strategy, passed recently in Geneva at the 69th World Health Assembly, follows in this admirable tradition.   But this effort goes beyond a current and easily observable health crisis, built instead from a huge insight on one of the mega-trends of our time -- 21st century longevity. The WHO has in its sights a unique approach to public health that fosters the goal of healthier and more active aging by enabling "functional ability" in our later decades. More than absence of disease is a huge shift, but has in its sights the essential need for wellness and prevention in an era of 100 year lives. Wow. A global institution with a strategy that offers the preconditions for healthier and more active aging today, even as it creates the solid foundations to aid our grandchildren's longer lives? A rare, much-welcome development.  Moreover, the strategy includes an execution plan for the 194 Health Ministers in the Geneva Assembly Hall to take home. They will report their progress over the next five years and then gather in 2020 to launch the decade of Healthy Ageing. The newly minted strategy impressively builds on a year of work by the WHO's Ageing and Life Course Unit, headed by Dr. John Beard, and ably supported by Dr. Alana Officer. Last October, they issued the report th...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news