World Health Day 2010
http://www.who.int/world-health-day/2010/en/index.html
World Health Day 2010 focused on urbanization and health. With the campaign "1000 cities - 1000 lives", events were organized worldwide calling on cities to open up streets for health activities. Stories of urban health champions were gathered to illustrate what people are doing to improve health in their cities.
In Serbia, WHO Country Office, Institute of Public Health of Serbia and Ministry of Health called on various partners to promote the initiative throughout Serbia. The City Assembly of the City of Belgrade with the Secretariat for Health, the "Standing Conference of Cities and Towns", the Red Cross of Serbia and many other partners including civil sector and media representatives engaged and organized events throughout Serbia. Fourteen cities in Serbia officially registered their events on the WHO - WHD2010 website.
The Serbian capital, Belgrade, which is in the WHO healthy cities network since 2007, was the place where WHD 2010 in Serbia was launched on 7th April 2010. The central conference was opened by the Minister of Health of Serbia, Tomica Milosavljevic, Dr Dorit Nitzan Kaluski, Head of WHO Country Office, and the Secretary for Health of the City of Belgrade, Dr Zoran Blagojevic. The audience included: representatives from the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning, all secretariats of City of Belgrade, National Health Council of Serbia, President of the Serbian Red Cross, Directors of Belgrade primary health centers, Director of Clinical Centre of Serbia, professors of the Belgrade University, representatives of EU projects in Serbia, and 20 media representatives (out of which 5 TV stations, 3 radio stations, and others were from printed media).
On 8 April, the city of Novi Sad (capital of the northern province of Vojvodina) organized a large open square event in the centre of the town closing it for traffic from 10.00 - 17.00 - and opening for various events. The event gathered representatives of health institutions (Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina, Primary Health Centre Novi Sad, University Students' policlinic of Novi Sad), secretariat for environmental protection and urban planning of Novi Sad, kindergartens of Novi Sad, Association of bicyclists of Novi Sad, NGOs: "Suicide prevention - SRCE (heart), Emprona (prevention of drug abuse), ECO ENGINEERING (environment and forestry), Dance for Life, Youth of Jazas. The activities included:
a) Teaching children to drive bicycles and use helmets (including ride on a "tandem" bicycle of an experienced bike rider and a child),
b) Skate board driving in the entire street and teaching kids how to drive skate boards
c) Kindergarten children used plastic bottles (that they collect for recycling together with their parents) and made small flowers to decorate the event
d) Dance for Life - presented their dance exhibition and danced salsa with visitors of events and offered "free hugs" to everybody - promoting good relationships and good emotions as a contribution to good health
e) Primary Health Centre (with volunteers from the Red Cross and University) interviewed all participants on their dietary habits and physical activity and offered immediate advice; as an award the interviewed persons won a special "health check up" and "assessment of health risks with individual interventions (advice, dietary counseling or other ) at the Primary Health Centre - at a day of their own choice and convenience" PHC also offered on the spot calculation of BMI and body fat; they demonstrated "clean hands" - i.e. offered gels for dry disinfection of hands and then offered a "check" of the cleanliness so everybody could check if and how thoroughly they cleaned their hands
f) Student Policlinic promoted the "cafe counseling" an innovative form of peer education on health risks for young people, especially focusing on STIs, (sexually transmitted infections), alcohol abuse and drug abuse. The peer educators are currently going through education (accredited programme for counseling for smoke cessation).
g) Secretariat for environmental protection and urban planning presented the project for planting more than 1000 trees in the town of Novi Sad, reconstruction of the river bank (Danube) as the recreation site for Novi Sad and construction for a safe skate and cycling park in Novi Sad.
The event was jointly opened by the mayor of Novi Sad, deputy secretary of health of Vojvodina and deputy head of WHO CO in Serbia. The event was fully covered with local media for Vojvodina and for Novi Sad.
On 10 April, Belgrade which has a tradition of organizing street events for citizens inviting them to enhance their physical movement included its traditional 17th Children marathon as one of the activities. Many more partners have already for many months planned and prepared this event in the most central park in Belgrade "Kalemegdan". The City Secretariat for Health and WHO organized a health bazaar in front of the Zoo park where the Children marathon tool place, so that visitors attending the 17th Children marathon, had the opportunity to also get preventive health services and counseling from a series of health stands set up by Belgrade Primary Health Centres. The focus was on healthy life styles and on the spot preventive health services (counseling for tobacco smoking cessation and scheduling visits to counseling services in Institute of Public Health of Serbia, measuring blood pressure, BMI, getting advice on physical exercise schemes etc.).