FIFA, UN kick off healthy living campaign

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 07 (APP):The World Health Organization (WHO), a United Nations agency, and football’s world governing body, FIFA, Monday agreed to a four-year collaboration to promote healthy lifestyles through football globally.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and FIFA President Gianni Infantino signed the memorandum of understanding at WHO’s Geneva-based headquarters.

“WHO is excited to be working with FIFA. Half the world watched the 2018 World Cup. This means there’s huge potential for us to team up to reach billions of people with information to help them live longer healthier lives,” Dr Tedros said.

Mr Infantino said, “I am extremely happy to announce this collaboration with WHO. Football is a unique, universal language and we want to use our platform and network to support health initiatives and promote healthy lifestyles all around the world.”

The agreement includes four areas of collaboration:

— Advocacy to promote a healthy lifestyle through football.

— Policy alignment to ensure tobacco-free environments at FIFA events; to encourage national football federations to adopt tobacco-free policies, including at stadiums; and to enable WHO to provide technical advice to FIFA on health matters.

–Building on FIFA events to institute lasting improvements in health and safety.