World Health Organization (WHO) celebrates the 7th of April as ‘World Health Day’ every year. This years World Health Day will focus on the impact of urbanization on our collective health globally and also individually.

With the campaign "1000 cities - 1000 lives", events were organized worldwide starting from the 7th of April 2010, calling on cities to open up streets for health activities. Stories of the various activities that cities have undertaken for this occasion and various urban health champions will be gathered by WHO to illustrate what people are doing to improve health in their cities.

The global goals of the campaign were:
1000 cities: to open up public spaces to health, it maybe activities in parks, town hall meetings, clean-up campaigns, or closing off portions of streets to motorized vehicles.
1000 lives: to collect 1000 stories of urban health champions who have taken action and had a significant impact on health in their cities.

As a WHO Collaborating Centre for Non-communicable Diseases Prevention and Control, we at Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialties Centre and Madras Diabetes Research Foundation planned many activities under this auspice. With the help of the Corporation of Chennai, the State Government and other local bodies who granted the requisite permissions to organize these events and joined our endeavor in taking suitable measures to make our city healthier. 

Between April 7th and 11th as part of the World Health Day 2010 campaign multiple screening camps were conducted across the length and breadth of Chennai city wherein more than 1000 people were screened for diabetes.  Besides screening, all camps had a physical activity demonstration session going on consecutively to highlight the role of physical activity in maintaining good health.

The highlight of these events was the ‘Cyclathon and Walkathon’ on April 11th 2010 (Sunday) from 7.00 am to 8.30 am from Gandhi Statue, Marina Beach until Presidency College. The Chief Guest for this event was our Worshipful Mayor of Chennai Corporation, Thiru. M Subramanyam, who not only flagged off this mega event but also enthusiastically participated in the cyclathon. 700 people participated in this one of a kind public awareness cyclathon & walkathon.

Along with the general public, children, members from our staff, participants of our ongoing Diabetes Prevention project known as ‘DCLIP’ – Diabetes Community Lifestyle Improvement Program also participated in this event earnestly.

Other in-house activities that were organized was a stress reduction lecture cum demonstration by Dr. Vinoda Kochupalli,  recipe demonstration of healthy recipes that require minimal preparation and cooking time and an awareness talk on management of gestational diabetes by Dr. Saroja Raghavan, Head of the dietetics dept. & her team.

We acknowledge the contributions of the following sponsors for the April 11th ‘Cyclathon & Walkathon’

• M/S Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) – for generously donating caps & T- shirts to the participants.
• M/S Nestle for the refreshments.
• M/S TI Cycles of India, Ambattur for sponsoring BSA Hercules cycles.
• Children from the Bright Tuition Centre for participating in this event enthusiastically.