Can you imagine a Healthy Future for all of us?

I know there’s a lot going on right now – 2020 has been a ride, especially with this worldwide COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on our hands. And ekcheli, as hard as it might be to imagine a healthy future, now is 10/10 the perfect time to talk about it.

‘Cause based off a recent Lancet report, kalau ikut cam skarang, memang takkan jadi lah sis!

The Lancet ni is basically a science journal and their report called A Future for World’s Children? was actually commissioned and endorsed by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, so memang legit la. #NotFakeNews

The report looked at how countries were protecting their children by looking at children’s survival and well-being berdasarkan health, education, nutrition, and sustainability.

And ya’ll – not even one country passed the test. No country was actually found to be adequately protecting their kids and their futures in 2020!!

 

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A post shared by UNICEF Malaysia (@unicefmalaysia) on Feb 21, 2020 at 2:31am PST

And out of 180 countries, Malaysia came in at #44. So walaupun still got a lot of work ahead of us, overall arah tuju kita not bad lah. And I know ya’ll probs wondering if we beat Singapore ‘cause we kiasu like that. We didn’t. Singapore ranked #12. So we gotta buck up and do better to match them!

PROMOTING HEALTHY HABITS

According to this report, our futures are under IMMEDIATE THREAT (yeah, I capped that to stress on how serious this is, you’re welcome) thanks to two main threats.

The first one is climate change / ecological degradation, which is totally terrifying but also not surprising. (FYI: Malaysia ranked #151 based on our CO2 emissions, so we should be very concerned about this!)

The second one however is actually bad marketing practices! Whaaaaaaaaat!

 

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A post shared by World Health Organization (@who) on Feb 21, 2020 at 3:42pm PST

Ya, honestly I totally did not expect this to be one of the main reasons why myself and other young people find it hard to be healthy. But exploitative marketing practices actually severely impact our health – mainly sebab they promote fast food, sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco.

Newsflash – all these things are super unhealthy, especially if kids are exposed to this kind of advertising from a young age. Malaysia already has a pretty bad track record for child obesity, so we definitely need more responsible advertising. Kalau tak, more kids are gonna continue developing habits that are anything but healthy as they grow up.

 

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A post shared by UNICEF (@unicef) on Feb 23, 2020 at 8:23am PST

It might not have been a huge issue for our parents growing up, but that’s ‘cause the world has changed since then. UNICEF is also aware of this.

From the climate crisis to obesity and harmful commercial marketing, children around the world are having to contend with threats that were unimaginable just a few generations ago.” — Henrietta Fore, UNICEF executive director.

SO, FUTURE NI CAMNE?

Not gonna lie folks – we’ve got work ahead of us! But it’s not too late to fix the future. It’s gonna take our gomen and all of us to make a different and create a healthy future for the world.

And I thought, well, sempena World Health Day ni, I could share some of the main things we can work on to do better for our future:

• Paling Important! We gotta save planet earth. No point planning for a future if we’re not gonna have a planet to live on. Let’s cut down our CO2 emissions and carbon footprint – maybe opt for public transport and choose to reduce, reuse and recycle more.
• Prioritise the kids! We gotta centre our efforts for sustainable development around kids, ‘cause they’re the ones who are most impacted by it!
• Policies and investments semua should take note of children’s health and rights, to make sure they aren’t harmful. Money is not worth more than our future.
• When it comes to advertising and marketing, we need stricter laws and regulations – and when in doubt, you can always refer to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
• And lastly – listen to kids and young people! Seriously! We need to make sure adults hear us when we tell them what matters to us. Our voices can change policies, if only the adults are willing to listen.

I believe these steps are the first of many – but they’re a great place to start. I think making sure that we focus on the future now will help to create one that gives the next generation a fair chance at a healthy life.

Also, there’s a lot more info in the Lancet Report. Like, really, it’s a lot, but if you’d like to read it, here’s a link.

Now go out there and save the future!

#HealthforAll