Gangdong-gu briefs WHO on healthcare tech

Gangdong-gu Mayor Lee Hae-sik delivers a speech on the district’s healthcare technologies at the 2016 Global Conference on Health Promotion held in Shanghai, China, Monday. / Courtesy of Gangdong-gu Office

By Park Jae-hyuk

Gangdong-gu Office head Lee Hae-sik introduced the district’s healthcare technologies at the Ninth Global Conference on Health Promotion in Shanghai, China, running from Monday to Thursday, the district office in eastern Seoul said Tuesday.

As a chairman of the Korea Healthy Cities Partnership, Lee introduced Gangdong-gu’s stair-climbing smartphone application, health checking zones and healthcare centers at the conference.

Thanks to the office’s efforts, the physical activity scale of its residents increased from 17.0 percent in 2009 to 26.1 percent last year and obesity rates dropped from 24.6 percent in 2008 to 23.5 percent last year, according to the 2015 Community Health Survey by Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Korea’s healthy cities are enhancing the global governance, building international networks with overseas healthy cities,” Lee said. “We will continue to share and develop our policies for Korea to be much healthier.”

Co-hosted by the World Health Organization and China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, the conference focuses on promoting health and sustainable development, which had been highlighted in the Ottawa Charter signed at the first international conference in 1986.

Participants of the conference included public policy decision makers, health promotion experts and ministers of agriculture, development cooperation, finance, foreign affairs, health, planning, and trade.

About 750 participants discussed better policies and introduced cases supporting healthy cities for sustainable development.