The World Health Organization’s (WHO) single global health campaign among its eight official global health campaigns is celebrated worldwide every year on April 7th as World Health Day. World Health Day is celebrated every year to draw the attention of the whole world towards the importance of development and improvement in the field of global health, and to raise awareness about current health-related issues and the dangers posed by infectious and epidemic diseases. It aims to inspire the world to gain knowledge about these diseases and raise awareness for prevention, treatment, and eradication globally.

According to the decision of the first World Health Assembly held in 1948, World Health Day is celebrated every year on April 7th. However, it was not until the 1950s that the first World Health Day was actually celebrated. On this day, the World Health Organization carries out various health-related programs and awareness campaigns at the international, national, regional, and local levels, in collaboration with various governmental and non-governmental organizations, to promote global health without any discrimination.

Since the establishment of World Health Day, dangerous epidemics, pandemics, infections, and life-threatening diseases have been constantly observed in the field of global health. In order to completely eliminate, prevent, protect, and provide comprehensive treatment for these diseases, every World Health Day, various campaigns, programs, and necessary research, study, and innovative work are carried out with different slogans and objectives. The World Health Day, every year, works towards raising awareness and providing accurate diagnosis of global health-related issues and diseases through specific and prioritized health campaigns. Since its inception, it has been striving to advance health campaigns globally, and the current year (2016) is no exception.

In previous years, unlike the subdued approach of the 2016 World Health Day, the day has been marked with more dramatic and theatrical campaigns aimed at raising awareness and providing solutions for the prevention, treatment, and cure of various life-threatening diseases, epidemics, infections, and illnesses in the global health sector. Starting from its establishment, the World Health Day has been working towards advancing health campaigns and programs with priority given to health-related issues through subject-specific approaches, and until now, it has been successful in doing so. According to the World Health Organization’s report, out of the 347 million people with diabetes worldwide, 1.5 million could be saved due to this health campaign, as of the shared concept of the World Health Day in 2016.