This year’s World Health Day theme is “Health for All”. The theme highlights the continued urgency for improvements to health inequity globally. The campaign aims to catalyse action towards greater health equity:
“The right to health is a basic human right. Everyone must have access to the health services they need when and where they need them without financial hardship” (World Health Organisation, 2023)
To achieve its goal, the campaign highlights the importance of having individuals and communities have access to high-quality services so that they can take care of their own health and that of their families in addition to skilled health workers providing quality, people-centred care; and policy makers being committed to investing in universal health coverage.
Notably, one of the key goals of the campaign is to ensure that everyone has access to quality healthcare, without facing financial hardship. This includes ensuring that essential health services, such as immunisation, maternal and child healthcare, and treatment for non-communicable diseases are available and affordable to everyone. The campaign also emphasises the need to strengthen primary healthcare systems and to invest in the healthcare workforce.
“Almost two billion people face catastrophic or impoverishing health spending, with significant inequalities affecting those in the most vulnerable settings” (World Health Organisation, 2023)
The World Health Day campaign calls for the need for collaboration between different sectors and stakeholders, including governments, civil society, academia, and the private sector to achieve health equity. It also emphasises the importance of empowering communities to take ownership of their health and to participate in decision-making processes that affect their health.
RING represents our action towards achieving this goal, by empowering individuals to take ownership of their health. With RING, people hold their lifetime medical records on their mobile phones, so it is readily accessible anytime, anywhere. This important repository of personal information enables individuals to participate in their health-related decision-making and support healthcare professionals in providing care centric to the specific individual. With the growing costs of healthcare, we aim to minimise costs to patients by reducing the need for duplication – patients will no longer need to do the repeated laboratory tests, x-rays, and so on when moving facilities or across time.
We strongly believe in the goal of this year’s World Health Day, which is why we are committed towards keeping RING free: ensuring RING remains financially accessible to everyone. By working together, we can ensure “Health for All”.
Bibliography
World Health Organisation, 2023. Key Messages: 75 years of improving public health. [Online] Available at:
https://www.who.int/campaigns/75-years-of-improving-public-health/key-messages
[Accessed 07 April 2023].