World Health Day

On the seventh of April of every year, the peoples of the earth and their governments celebrate World Health Day — the day on which the member states ratified the constitution of the World Health Organization, one of the organizations attached to the Economic and Social Council; this took place in Geneva in 1948.

The Organization's constitution contains the broadest and most complete definition of the standard of health that the human race has known from the beginning of creation down to our own day. For it states that "health is a person's enjoyment of his full mental and physical powers, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity," and that "the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, or economic and social condition."

Inspired by the principles set down in its constitution, the Organization considers that the health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security, and that its achievement depends on the fullest possible cooperation of the efforts of individuals and governments; that upon governments falls the responsibility for the health of their peoples — a responsibility that can be discharged only by providing adequate health and social measures; and that whatever any government does to improve health and preserve it is of value to all.

With such lofty aims did the human race confront itself at the opening of the second half of the twentieth century, and with them it turned toward its world, to lighten somewhat the heaps of misery and pain that have accompanied infirmity and disease throughout the generations.

This modern tendency — indeed this comprehensive philosophical outlook, which sees in a properly provided standard of health a fundamental right of every human being, a first condition of peace, and one of the duties of the state — is proof of our deep feeling of a pressing need calling us to be freed from the fears of disease; for disease is the companion of ignorance and want, the enemy of well-being, and the enemy of all progress and advancement.

The defining of this new current of thought in the manner set forth in the Organization's constitution is the result of collective labor, shared in by the member states that answered the invitation of the Secretariat-General of the United Nations to take part in the World Health Conference held in New York City in the summer of 1946.

Among the delegates of the member states were three groups. One group represented the advanced nations, which had embraced these principles and striven to apply them before the United Nations Organization existed. A second group felt the nobility of the mission which the countries marching forward in the procession of civilization had preceded it in fulfilling, and so took part in the World Health Conference hoping, out of a desire to learn, to borrow the methods that would help it undertake a similar attempt, for the good of its people and the well-being of its individuals. And a third group was, up to the date of the conference, still a stranger to this outlook, because its leaders of thought had been slow to awaken to the importance of the standard of health, its relation to social and economic conditions, and its connection with collective safety and the general good. This group falls, in the classification now current, under the heading of the countries retarded in their social growth, or the countries lagging behind the procession of civilization.

The Lebanese may not be pleased at his belonging to this group, given his faith in his own capabilities and the nature of his land, and his pride in the progressive stride his society has made in the first half of the present century. Yet the truth of the matter, as the statistics show it and the figures define it — and in them we have the most precise and eloquent testimony — speaks contrary to what he would wish, and places him, regrettably, in the third of the groups mentioned.

If the Lebanese realized that such a standard helps others to judge that beautiful Lebanon — the Lebanon we love and whose glories we sing — is unprogressive; that it is not yet fit, in the full sense of the word, to be a home for man, or to assume the leadership of social and intellectual progress in the Arab East; and that it is unworthy of survival in view of the serious and effective contribution it could make to human civilization — he would not waste his own time,

and he would strive from this very hour, with all the energy given him, to embrace the philosophy of the age which makes a properly provided standard of health the right of every human being, and to apply this philosophy to his private and public life, making of it a fruitful work and a living reality which he lives, reaping from it benefits many times multiplied.

Whoever among us has followed the history of the birth of the World Health Organization — which has deserved that we honor it with one day of every year, because it dawned upon us with a beautiful new color of thought, showing us that the attainment of peace and security in the world does not come by the massing of arms and other destructive forces, but by raising the standard of health, so that we may grow strong, as individuals and as communities, to fight ignorance and poverty, and to be freed from the yoke of want and the shadow of privation which long burdened the East and made it an easy morsel in the mouths of tyrants and colonizers — will recall that Lebanon hesitated long before joining the Organization's membership, and was absent from its general assembly at the hour when, for the first time in the history of the human race, World Health Day was proclaimed in Geneva in the summer of 1948, in commemoration of the approval of the Organization's constitution, adopted by most of the member states in the persons of their delegates.

Lebanon's hesitation at such an awesome historic moment was prompted by the narrowness of its financial means, which swung long in that scale of values which has set material values, in the Lebanese mind, above the ultimate fundamental ones.

In this crisis, as in other crises, Lebanon returned to its conscience; it came back to its senses and joined the Organization's membership in 1949, giving thereby fresh proof that though it may be diverted from fundamental things for a time, it does not forget them; and though material concerns may turn it away from them, it will return to them — because in the depth of its soul there is that which drives it, when the final battle is joined between what is passing and what is fundamental and final,

to choose this latter, and to cling to the bonds of survival. Time has robbed us of much of the cedar — symbol of this mountain's firmness and loftiness, symbol of its glory and immortality — yet it has kept for us some remnants, to remind us through the passing ages of the necessity of holding fast to survival.

Lebanon has become a member of the World Health Organization; it has become a partner in embracing its constitution and realizing its principles, and it has taken part in its general sessions and in the work of its executive committee more than once. And here it is today grasping the first thread of practical execution, for it has begun to draw on the technical and financial resources the Organization possesses, to create sufficient health consciousness, to check the spread of malaria, and to establish working models for maternal and child welfare — and it is well known of these models that they form the starting point in raising the standard of health.

Lebanon is on the road of achievement; and as the world prepares to celebrate Health Day, which falls on the seventh of April, I ask of every Lebanese who believes in Lebanon's mission that he contribute his share to this achievement, so that together we may grow strong to raise our standard of health to the place befitting our human dignity and the dignity of Lebanon.