The World Health Organisation, WHO has called on Nigerian government to prioritise health towards achieving the Sustainable Development goals in the country.
The WHO Country Representative to Nigeria, Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo stated this in Abuja at the end of a seven kilometre walk to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the WHO.
The walk was titled ” 75 years of Improving Public Health”
He said that the coming seventy five years would be better than the past seventy five years.
Mulombo also noted that treating health as an economic enabler would result in Governments’ adherence to the 2001 15% funding pledge made in the Abuja Declaration.
“We look towards the world where health issues will be treated as human wright, we look at the world where no child will miss a vaccine, we look at the world where no adult or adolescent would miss a vaccine to help him grow better.
“We look at the world where health issues are also considered the same way we consider security issue and peace and developmental issues. It is aspiration, but with the Constituency of WHO, it would be possible including Nigeria,” Dr Mulombo said.
Regular Exercise
He also said that there was the need to ensure regular exercise especially as there was a change in demographics, as nothing can beat physical exercise.
“We are here to remind the world through our “walk the talk”, that it is not about what we did in the last 75 years, but it is about what we would do in the next 75years. It is not about last 5 years, it is about what we would do for the world in the next 5 years. It is not about yesterday, it is about tomorrow and the future.
“We want to use it to remind the world that nothing can beat physical exercise especially as we are seeing the demographic transition , people are leaving younger and we must adapt to the health system and health issues,” he said.
Similarly, the UN Director, Ronald Kayanja said that exercises helped to improve life expectancy, deal with a number of diseases to include pandemics and the disease.
He explained that a minimum of 30 minutes exercise trice a week was important for every human being, especially as humans are regularly transiting demographically.
“As our work continues to change we are no longer in the farms manynof us are in the offices we don’t do a lot of exercise and that leads to difficulties so this walk is to celebrate WHO and to show one of the priorities of he organisation of ensuring people do physical exercises to limit the orevalence of non communicable diseases,” Kayanja said.
He congratulated governments agencies, partners, research institutes and other stakeholders whom through their various collaborations, made it possible for WHO to succeed around the world.
Confidence Okwuchi
