Haile Gebrselassie And WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Inaugurate WHO’s ‘Walk The Talk’ Challenge In Geneva

I was in Geneva today to cover marathon legend Haile Gebrselassie’s role in helping to inaugurate the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) “Walk the Talk: Health for All Challenge”, a global movement to promote health and, particularly, physical activity as part of a healthy sustainable future.

The event, organized as part of the celebrations of the WHO’s 70th anniversary and staged on the eve of its 71st World Health Assembly, was the brainchild of WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, whose aims include raising the profile and awareness of the work and goals of the organization, to engage some of the World Health Assembly delegates from the WHO’s 194 member states who have converged this week on Geneva, and to introduce the event as an annual gathering. If you’re interested, my story for the IAAF, the world governing body for track and field, is here.

Among the morning’s special guests was Graca Machel, a long-time campaigner for global universal health coverage and co-founder of The Elders, an international non-governmental organisation of public figures noted as elder statesmen, peace activists, and human rights advocates, who were brought together by her late husband Nelson Mandela in 2007. 

Jacques Dubochet, a retired Swiss biophysicist and Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Valentin Zellweger, Ambassador of the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations in Geneva, also addressed the gathering.

A few more images from the day’s event are below.