Today is Self-Care day!

Today (24 July) is International Self-Care Day, which marks the end of Self-Care Month, which has been running since the 24 June. Today was chosen because self-care can be practiced 24/7.

Both the month and day provides an opportunity to:

• raise additional awareness about self-care and self-care interventions;
• celebrate the benefits that they bring to people's lives and what has been achieved so far;
• call for renewed commitments and action to expand health systems to include self-care interventions.

What is self-care and self-care interventions?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines self-care as individuals, families, and communities' prompting and maintaining their own health, preventing disease, and coping with illness and disability, with or without the support of a health worker.

Self-care interventions are the evidence-based tools that support self-care, including:

• medicines;
• counselling;
• diagnostic kits; and
• digital technologies.

Why is self-care so important?

Self-care is about empowering people to be active agents in their own healthcare. Doing so not only puts people at the centre of their own healthcare, but also relieves pressures on health systems.

Those pressures are growing and include:

• 4.3 billion people with inadequate access to essential facility-based health services;
• an estimated global shortage of health workers of 10 million health workers, mainly in low-and-middle income countries;
• one in five of the world's population living in humanitarian crises, during which health systems are particularly challenged to deliver essential services;
• pandemics, like COVID-19, armed conflicts and climate change, also disrupting and stretching health services worldwide.

Self-care interventions give people choice and the option to access healthcare wherever and whenever they want to. They do not replace health systems, but enhance them, and are part of a holistic approach to healthcare which improves Primary Health Care and contributes to Universal Health Coverage.

How can I get involved?

WHO suggest the following to get involved with self-care:

• learn more by visiting WHO's self-care health topic page;
• find out if there are any self-care activities going on where you live and take part, or organise your own activities;
• take time to think about how you can practice self-care each day to help improve your health and well-being.

For more information on this subject, see:

• Classification of self-care interventions for health;
• Self-care interventions for health.