World Health Day is celebrated on April 7 and this year is the 75th anniversary of the World Health Organization. The theme is: Health for all.

The theme of World Health Day 2023 struck me unpleasantly, because it is simply not possible. Diseases are and always will be part of human life. This Day should be about proper and accessible access to health care for all, just as proper social support.

In recent decades a lot has been improved for people all over the world. The (western) medical knowledge and skills are amazing and get better every day. However, the same medical world must recognise that it is not omniscient and that there are conditions they (still) can’t explain nor cure. However, this should never be used as an excuse to dismiss the pain and suffering of sick people!

In addition, we should pay way more attention to and have respect for traditional and natural cures. Those have been around for millennia, on all continents and still western medicine pushes it away, because ‘this can’t be proved, so we can’t take it seriously’. Yet, western medicine has to acknowledge more and more that traditional and natural cures do have merit. For example, chewing willow bark has been ridiculed, until research found it contains aspirin…

The World Health Organization (WHO) now recognises traditional medicine and defines it as: “The sum total knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not*, that are used to maintain health, as well as to prevent, diagnose, improve or treat physical and mental illness.”

* By (the limitations of) western medicine, that is.

Frigga