On April 7th, the 2010 World Health Day commemoration activities were initiated on Beijing Olympic Jingguan Avenue. The theme of this year’s World Health Day is “Urbanization and Health”. The Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Health Huang Jiefu, representative of WHO in China Dr. Michael John O’Leary and the General Director of Beijing Municipal Health Bureau Fang Laiying and other related leaders attended the activity and delivered speeches.  

At the meeting, Deputy Minister Huang Jiefu said that the Chinese government has fully understood the negative effect of urbanization on our health and has actively responded to the call from the WHO. The Ministry of Health and National Health Movement Committee Office will choose one street in each of the 449 cities as restricted area for automobile vehicles, and multiple forms of health publicity activities will also be launched.  

On behalf of the organizers, Director Fang Laiying remarked at the meeting that health is the foundation for development of human society and health is a productive force. Health can improve the development potential and competitive strength of a city. The development of a city must be aligned with rise of people’s living quality and health level. At present, Beijing is dedicated to building itself into an international city, shaping a green Beijing, cultural Beijing and technological Beijing, which can only be achieved on the basis of health. Through years of work, the Beijing municipal committee and the city government have been attaching great importance to improving public health security and citizens’ health standard, regarding it as an important part in carrying out the scientific outlook on development, promoting the capital’s modernization and raising people’s living quality. 

Dr. Michael John O’Leary, on behalf of the WHO, also addressed the meeting.

After the ceremony, Deputy Minister Huang Jiefu, Dr. Michael John O’Leary, Director Fang Laiying and other officials watched the Taichi and martial arts performance organized by the community residents. They also joined the walking activity and signed on the wall scroll “a thousand cities, a thousand stories”.

The activity was organized jointly by the Ministry of Health, National Health Movement Committee Office and Beijing Municipal Government, and was held jointly by China Health Education Center/Ministry of Health Publicity Center, Beijing Patriotic Health Campaign Commission, Beijing Municipal Health Bureau and Chaoyang District Government. 

Backgroud: World Health Day: the World Health Assembly in 1950 set April 7th as the World Health Day. Afterwards, on the World Health Day of each year, the WHO would choose a theme related to public health and arrange every member state to hold activities to promote and propagate health knowledge. According to the experts’ estimation, the urbanization level in China will reach 50% in 2010. While raising people’s living standard, urbanization has brought about a series of environmental and health problems such as damaged ecology, polluted environment, crowded traffic and housing shortage, severely threatening human’s health and security. The theme of this year’s World Health Day is “Urbanization and Health”, which calls for people’s attention to the effect that urbanization has brought to global public health and personal health and advocates the public to develop a healthy life style, thus promoting the development of the health sector in different countries.