Tunis: The World Health Organisation (WHO) picked "My Heath, My Right" as a theme for the World Health Day 2024. "This year's theme was chosen to champion the right of everyone, everywhere, to have access to quality health services, education, and information, as well as safe drinking water, clean air, good nutrition, quality housing, decent working and environmental conditions, and freedom from discrimination," reads a WHO statement. "Around the world, the right to health of millions is increasingly coming under threat. Diseases and disasters loom large as causes of death and disability. Conflicts are devastating lives, causing death, pain, hunger and psychological distress. The burning of fossil fuels is simultaneously driving the climate crisis and taking away our right to breathe clean air, with indoor and outdoor air pollution claiming a life every 5 seconds," the organisation further said. The WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All has found that at least 140 countries recognise health as a human right in their constitution. Yet countries are not passing and putting into practice laws to ensure their populations are entitled to access health services. This underpins the fact that at least 4.5 billion people - more than half of the world's population - were not fully covered by essential health services in 2021. The global community has been observin World Health Day since 1950 with each theme addressing a particular concern at one point of time. World Health Day is an opportunity to launch long-term awareness programmes. Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse