World Health Day 2008

WHO celebrates its 60th anniversary on April 7th, World Health Day. Although the health situation and the world itself at the early stage were quite different from today’s world, WHO’s significance and goals have not changed. Diseases know no political or geographic borders. Fighting disease successfully requires international and interdisciplinary cooperation.suomi/ktlehti2008/nro_3/who_60.gif

In the past years WHO has increased its efforts to control new health threats. These include, in addition to climate change, problems such as mobility of health care personnel and populations, availability of drugs and vaccines in developing countries and associated problems of pricing and patents, managing the consequences of natural catastrophes as well as strengthening public health infrastructure in member countries.

Poorest countries bear the greatest health burden of climate change

The theme of this year’s World Health Day – Protecting health from climate change – reminds us that apart from its several other consequences climate change has various health effects that need to be identified and addressed. According to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) adverse health effects are caused by scarcity of food and water resulting from drought, changes in the prevalence of infectious diseases, increases in extreme temperatures and the frequency and severity of natural phenomena as well as increase in air pollution. At first, most of these consequences of climate change have a minor impact on Finland compared with many other countries.

Climate warming affects the prevalence of infectious diseases in many different ways. Infections spread by insects and arthropods, so called vectors, together with water-borne infections are most sensitive to climate change. Climatic conditions control the incidence of disease-spreading vectors, their life span, reproduction, frequency of bites and stings of humans and the development of disease-causing microbes. As climate change proceeds we can expect to see in Finland more infectious diseases that are now typical to warmer climates. This will influence directly the work of KTL in surveillance and control of infectious diseases in Finland.

Climate change also leads to poorer air quality which in turn increases the prevalence of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. KTL has worked together with the Finnish Meteorological Institute on fine particle research.

World Health Day 2008 at KTL

On WHD KTL hosts an expert panel discussion on the control of climate change and necessary adjustment measures, particularly from the viewpoints of environmental health and infectious diseases. The panelists represent various disciplines coming from top Finnish research and government institutions.


For further information, please contact

Director General
Pekka Puska
Tel +358(0) 9 4744 8200

Research Professor
Petri Ruutu
Tel +358 (0) 9 4744 8670

Research Professor
Matti Jantunen
Tel +358 (0) 17 201 340

National Public Health Institute Finland, KTL
E-mail: firstname.lastname@ktl.fi




World Health Day 2008 (WHO)

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth evaluation report