Every year World Health Day is celebrated on 7th April which is the day World Health Organization was born or came into existence. The World Health Day is based on a theme selected by World Health Organization and the theme of 2010 World Health Day is “Urbanization: a challenge for public health” and the World Health Day 2010 campaign is “1000 cities, 1000 lives”.

Why the theme?

The World Health Organization select a theme based on the importance of the particular subject and this year’s theme was selected to give importance to the public health problems of the cities across the globe. At present context the subject of healthy cities is very important as more than 50% of world population live in cities. In the year 2007 itself more than half of the world population started living in the cities, which is only growing and it is estimated that by 2030 more than 60% of the world population will reside in cities. Here lies the importance of urban health and so the World Health Day theme. At present more than 3 billion people live in cities.

In simple term “halitosis” is bad breath or unpleasant odor in breath or exhaled air and it is the third most common reason (dental carries and gum diseases are the commonest causes) why people visit dentists. There are several factors that affect the quality of the exhaled breath and all these factors can cause bad breath. Most people suffer from bad breath occasionally but for some people bad breath is permanent problem and the worst part is many (probably most) people with halitosis are unaware of their problem. Sometimes friends and relatives do not inform the individual about the bad breath, thinking that the person may not take it positively. The factors which may cause halitosis may be in the mouth, airways, GIT (stomach or esophagus).

The term “halitophobia” is used to denote fear of suffering from halitosis or the fear of those who are already suffering from halitosis.