Welcome to the World Health Day web site,

What is this? Well, for more than 20 years the United Nation’s World Health Organization (WHO) has sponsored an annual World Health Day each April 7, the anniversary of the group’s founding in 1948. There is a different theme for World Health Day each year.

For the first time, WHO has decided to focus on the growing problem of road traffic safety injuries with the slogan, “Road Safety Is No Accident!” Although 1.2 million people die annually in traffic crashes around the globe, road safety is still seen by many as a transportation problem rather than a public health problem. In response, WHO has identified traffic safety as a global health threat that could soon eclipse malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS to become the third leading of death global disease burden worldwide by 2020. Traffic deaths were responsible for 2.2 percent of worldwide mortality in 2002 and one-quarter of all injuries that led to death that year. Unless we take immediate action, the traffic death and injury rate has been projects to rise by 60 percent by 2020, hitting low- and middle-income nations the hardest.

On this year’s World Health Day, April 7, 2004, the 191 member nations of WHO will begin a yearlong series of events to address the growing need for traffic safety around the world. The U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are leading World Health Day activities in the United States, with assistance from many other federal agencies and partners.

Take a look at the materials on this web site. They are intended to provide support for World Health Day related events and activities that will occur throughout the year.

There is a need for greater understanding of the burden that traffic injury place on all nations. We hope these materials will stimulate solutions to increase road traffic safety for all.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey W. Runge, M.D.