Key WHO/Europe events in 2013

Following the adoption of Health 2020, the European policy for health and well-being, in September 2012, and building on past resolutions and collaborative work, WHO/Europe plans many activities, campaigns and events in 2013.

Here are some highlights.

• Joint meeting of the regional verification commission for measles and rubella elimination and national verification committees for Nordic and western European countries will take place on 29–30 January, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The goal is to eliminate measles and rubella from the WHO European Region by 2015.
• WHO/Europe will move its main office in Copenhagen to new premises. Tentatively scheduled for March 2013, the move will bring together in one location all the United Nations agencies in Copenhagen. 
• The third session of the Twentieth Standing Committee of the Regional Committee (SCRC) will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark on 18–19 March.
• The theme for World Health Day in 2013, celebrated on 7 April, is hypertension. This condition increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure and, when not controlled, can cause blindness, heartbeat irregularities and heart failure.
• A high-level technical meeting on health systems in times of economic crisis, to be held on 17–18 April in Oslo, Norway, will follow up the high-level ministerial meeting on this theme, held in Oslo in April 2009.
• European Immunization Week will be celebrated on 20–27 April. Continuing last year’s success, including the participation of all 53 Member States in the European Region, in 2013 the initiative will focus on the people affected by vaccine-preventable diseases, as a reminder of the continuing threat to the European Region.
• The Sixty-sixth World Health Assembly will be held on 20–28 May 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland.
• The 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion 2013 is scheduled for 10–14 June in Helsinki, Finland. One day will be devoted to inspirational experiences with health promotion in the European Region.
• WHO/Europe will hold a European ministerial conference on nutrition and noncommunicable diseases within the framework of Health 2020 on 4–5 July in Vienna, Austria. It will address policy options on nutrition and will be the first to look at nutrition and diet in the Region through the lens of Health 2020.
• The sixty-third session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe will take place on 16–19 September 2013. 
• A conference on health systems, scheduled for 17–18 October in Tallinn, Estonia, will mark the progress made since Member States adopted the Tallinn Charter: Health Systems for Health and Wealth at the WHO European Ministerial Conference on Health Systems in 2008. 
• The thirty-fifth anniversary of the Declaration of Alma-Ata will be celebrated in November 2013 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
• A ministerial conference on the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases is scheduled for 3–4 December 2013 in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.