The World Health Day is celebrated every year on the 7th of April, the founding date of the World Health Organization (WHO). A high-level debate took place in Singapore on the 2nd of April this year, as the 7th of April not only fell on a Saturday but also on Easter.

This year's theme was international health security. These historically unprecedented globalisation and mobility that we are witnessing bring to the health field “universal vulnerability”, to quote from the speech of Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization. “This creates a need for collective defences and for shared responsibility in making these defences work.” Speaking about this shared responsibility, Dr. Chan also underlined the importance of acting in pre-emptive way.
For the first time since its establishment, the WHO is authorized to act on media reports and use information other than official government notifications. Especially for matters of universal security, this is a significant step forward indeed.
Another important point made by Dr. Chan concerned the misuse of antimicrobials which causes drugs to fail much faster than the speed of replacing them, making antibiotics and other drugs no longer effective.

Last but not least, both Dr. Chan and Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, spoke of investment in health as a keystone of economic growth and development. The issue is very important but they both approach it in a general and not quite convincing way. We all know there is investment in health, but how efficient is it? From this point of view a lot of things would be better understood if health was seen an economic growth in itself rather than a never-ending investment with the indirect meaning of expense.

These global security concerns are more developed in the WHO Issue paper "Invest in health, build a safer future". The main discussions presented here refer to emerging diseases such as avian influenza, international crisis and humanitarian emergencies, rapidly spreading diseases, the ongoing danger of bioterrorism, chemical spills or radioactive accidents, and the impact of HIV/AIDS. There are also two sub-chapters on environmental change and economic stability as strongly linked to and basis for a good global health protection.
The main conclusion of the paper is that we need to strengthen national and global preparedness and that capacity building should be based on the needs of the country, involving everyone, from governments to civil society and thus creating “a network of networks”. “The way to health is not through building national fortresses, but strengthening health systems globally.”