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World Health Day is celebrated on April 7th to mark the founding of the World Health Organization. Each year, the Organization selects a key health issue and encourages people of all ages and backgrounds to hold events that highlight the significance of this issue for good health and well-being. World Health Day provides a unique opportunity for communities from across the world to come together for one day to promote actions that can improve our help. Antimicrobial resistance is not a new problem but one that is becoming more dangerous; urgent and consolidated efforts are needed to avoid regressing to the pre-antibiotic era. On World Health Day 2011, WHO will introduce a six-point policy package to combat the spread of antimicrobial resistance. We live in an era in which we depend on antibiotics, and other antimicrobial medicines to treat conditions that decades ago, or even a few years, would have proved fatal. When antimicrobial resistance - also known as drug resistance - occurs, it renders these medicines ineffective. For World Health Day 2011, WHO will be calling for intensified global commitment to safeguard these medicines for future generations. Antimicrobial resistance - the theme of World Health Day 2011 - and its global spread, threatens the continued effectiveness of many medicines used today to treat infectious diseases. For World Health Day 2011, WHO will call on governments and stakeholders to implement the policies and practices needed to prevent and counter the emergence of highly resistant microorganisms.
Antimicrobial resistance: no action today, no cure tomorrow
Antimicrobial resistance and its global spread
www.who.int/en/
