World Health Day 2025: Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures

Every year on April 7th, the World Health Organization (WHO) observes World Health Day to raise awareness about pressing health challenges. This year’s theme, “Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures,” kicks off a year-long campaign focusing on maternal and newborn health, urging action in reducing preventable maternal and child mortality.

This campaign is a crucial step toward achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 3—ensuring healthy lives and well-being for all.

EFF’s Commitment to Maternal and Child Health

This campaign is a crucial step toward achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 3—ensuring healthy lives and well-being for all.

At EFF we have been working for years to address malnutrition and food security, especially among mothers and children in vulnerable communities. In Kilifi, Kenya, where micronutrient deficiencies and high child mortality rates persist, we’ve championed the use of finger millet — a highly nutritious, drought-resistant superfood

Over the last three years, EFF has empowered 15,000 farmers through:

  • Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) training in finger millet cultivation
  • Post-harvest handling methodologies to preserve nutritional quality
  • Certified seeds for planting on quarter-acre plots

This intervention yields 2-3 bags (90kg each) per farmer—enough to provide year-round nutritious food for young mothers and children in each household.

Key traits that make finger millets the ideal cereal:

  • Rich in iron, calcium, and amino acids—essential for pregnant women and growing infants
  • Gluten-free and easily digestible, making it ideal for baby weaning foods
  • Drought-resistant, ensuring food security in climate-vulnerable regions

Through community training programs, we educate mothers on nutritious food preparation using finger millets, helping combat stunting, anemia, and malnutrition-related illnesses. Our efforts align perfectly with this year’s World Health Day mission—ensuring healthier beginnings for the next generation.

Agricultural Productivity: Enhance agricultural productivity through sustainable and climate-smart practices, improved access to quality seeds, fertilisers, and modern technologies, and training for small-scale farmers. b. Irrigation and Water Management: Promote water conservation techniques, efficient irrigation systems, and integrated water resource management to ensure a reliable water supply for agriculture. c. Diversification: Encourage crop diversification to enhance food availability and household nutrition by promoting the cultivation of smart food crops and high-value crops for increased income generation. d. Storage and Distribution: Strengthen post-harvest management and improve storage infrastructure to reduce household food losses; and promote efficient aggregation systems for improved inputs distribution and access to markets. e. Market Linkages & Financial Services: Support the establishment or farmer cooperatives/ organisations for effective produce aggregation and market linkages, and provide technical assistance to enable small-scale producers to access domestic and international markets and financial services, fostering income generation and economic growth. f. Skills Training and Capacity Building: Facilitate agronomic training, entrepreneurship development, and business management skills to enhance the capacity of smallholder farmers and communities to generate sustainable incomes.
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