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.
