24 June marks the start of Self-Care Month, which ends with Self-Care Day on 24 July. This symbolic day was chosen because self-care can be practiced “24 hours a day/7 days a week”.
During the month, people around the world will be celebrating self-care and how it can make a difference to everyone’s lives. Learn more about what self-care is and why it is so important.
WHO defines self-care as individuals, families and communities’ promoting 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. They include medicines, counselling, diagnostic kits, and digital technologies. Now is an exciting time with more and more tools being developed.
Self-care is about empowering people to be active agents in their own healthcare. As well as being the right thing to do, with more and more pressure on health systems there is a great need. Those pressures include:
Self-care and self-care interventions are part of the future of healthcare. They should not replace health systems, but rather enhance them.
There lots of things you can do:
Related
WHO Guideline on self-care interventions for health and well-being
Classification of self-care interventions for health: a shared language to describe the uses of self-care interventions
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