Wellness Week: Our Neighbourhood, Our Country

Starting Saturday 10^th until next 16^th, Wellness Week takes place in many countries of the Americas, which this time has the neighborhood as center to promote healthy environments.

Cuba joins, as every year, this initiative sponsored by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) since 2011 and which now has the motto "Our neighborhood, our health" following the theme of World Health Day. Health 2022: "Our planet, our health", which focused efforts on urgent actions in favor of the health of people and the planet.

With regard to this week, the director of PAHO/WHO, Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, said that on this occasion the neighborhood had been chosen as the theme of Wellness Week "because we want to recognize the value it has in promoting health and the welfare of people and communities.

She stressed that these spaces are essential for our health and are even more relevant at this time, when we begin to live together again after two years of pandemic with the limitations that have prevented us from enjoying life in the neighborhoods.

"When we recognize the places where we spent our childhoods, where we played and watched our families work, it makes us reflect on the impact that environment has had on our lives."

Cuba and its neighborhoods

Precisely from the principle of the importance of neighborhood to promote identities, a sense of belonging, also self-sustainability, local development and health, among many others in favor, Cuba has been deploying, for a long time now, countless efforts to put the neighborhood in its right place , and especially those located in vulnerable environments.

No wonder, Dr. José Moya, PAHO/WHO representative in Cuba, assured that Cuba together with the PAHO member states, is committed to strengthening healthy environments and facilitating the participation and empowerment of the community as part of the Strategy and Plan of Action on Health Promotion in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals 2019-2030.

Although this Wellness Week will intensify environmental sanitation actions and health fairs, teaching, scientific, and educational activities will take place, such as the training of community leaders, the commitment of this country is much more comprehensive.

And these efforts don't date back just to a handful of months. They are continuity of the thought and action of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, who always advocated supporting the most vulnerable or disadvantaged communities, and for this, among his many contributions, he created the Social Workers Program, which recently turned 22 years of foundation.

The government plan that is being followed today and that has systematic check-ups, as well as the visit of the highest executives of the country to these communities, is a follow-up of those efforts and proposes, among other goals, to improve the infrastructure of those localities, the services and, in general, the quality of life of those who live there and have known how to recognize so many efforts.

They recognize and applaud them because, firstly, they are based on their particular needs and expectations, since each transformative attempt starts from dialogue with the neighbors, who propose and contribute together with the contribution of very diverse entities because popular control and participation are essential.

Consequently, with the maxim of leading alongside science, universities throughout the country have played an interesting and novel role diagnosing difficulties, vulnerabilities in these neighborhoods, and also putting their shoulders together when it comes to shoveling cement or cleaning up a trash landfill.

In addition to the transformations in the urban order, the improvement of objective conditions, it’s also "a comprehensive program that highlights the cultural and spiritual growth of people, and takes into account the creation of jobs and development opportunities for the people who live in these communities.

This is how President Miguel Díaz-Canel underlined last July and has systematically insisted on this approach.

But even when the transformation of the neighborhoods is not a matter of a week time, it’s worth remembering, regarding this Wellness Week, which takes the neighborhood as the center for good health, which it was precisely in the neighborhoods throughout Cuba where the most important battle for the health of Cubans is still in motion.

From the work of family doctors, vaccination campaigns, the demand for compliance with hygienic-sanitary measures, to vector control, and, above all, citizen responsibility and solidarity, have their best scenario in the neighborhoods, which are Cuba pulsating between the neighbors and their communities.