To­day marks the start of a year-long cam­paign, be­gin­ning with this year's ob­ser­vance of World Health Day and con­tin­u­ing to March 2013. World Health Day is a glob­al cam­paign, en­gag­ing lead­ers and civ­il so­ci­ety in all coun­tries, to fo­cus on a sin­gle health chal­lenge with glob­al im­pact. The fo­cus this year is age­ing and health with the theme "Good health adds life to years."

Lo­cal­ly, the Min­istry of Health has em­barked on a ro­bust cam­paign to re­duce the in­ci­dence of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) which is the cause of more than 60 per cent of all deaths an­nu­al­ly. A pro­gramme of ac­tiv­i­ties has been planned to high­light the ac­tions that pro­mote and sup­port healthy and ac­tive age­ing.

The min­istry has al­so ini­ti­at­ed an Age-friend­ly Health Fa­cil­i­ty Pro­gramme as part of World Health Day ac­tiv­i­ties. Over the pe­ri­od April to De­cem­ber, pri­ma­ry health­care fa­cil­i­ties will be as­sessed, mod­i­fied and cer­ti­fied as age-friend­ly util­is­ing the WHO age-friend­ly health fa­cil­i­ties toolk­it.

The min­istry is urg­ing all cit­i­zens, , from pol­i­cy mak­ers and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to old­er peo­ple and youth, to take ac­tion to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties which ap­pre­ci­ate and ac­knowl­edge old­er peo­ple as val­ued re­sources and en­able them to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly, and to help pro­tect and im­prove health as we age.