There is a great asset that we begin thinking of once we have lost it: health. World Health Day, April 7 is marked every year to ring a bell about health and to honor the work of the professionals who are there to provide us with treatment. The World Health Organization has been marking this day for longer than fifty years.

In 2014, on this day a campaign was launched for the prevention of vector- borne diseases. They are most typical of tropical regions of the world where access to clean water and sanitation is limited. The deadliest such contagion is malaria, which in 2010 took around 660,000 victims - mostly children in Africa. The most quickly spreading disease, however, is the dengue virus infection, which for the past 50 years has expanded its scope 30 times. Both are transmitted through mosquito bites.

Insects can be carriers of a number of parasites and pathogens that attack both humans and animals. Mosquitoes, for example, may infect a person with six different and dangerous diseases. Besides malaria and the dengue virus, these are lymphatic filariasis known as "elephant disease", Chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis and yellow fever. Usually one bite is enough to infect the blood.

Globalization, intensified links between the continents, urbanization and climate change has a major influence on the spread of these infections into countries where they have been hitherto unknown. Therefore, the efforts of international NGOs and governments against them have intensified. Although the scope of vector-borne diseases increases, the joint efforts fail to reduce deaths, the WHO reports.

The aim of this year's campaign of the healthcare organization is to inform communities that are most at risk, but also everyone else at risk such as travelers, international traders and people in countries where this is a new threat on how to protect themselves from such infections.

Battle – this is probably the word that most concisely captures the developments in the Bulgarian healthcare system over the recent years. Doctors have been fighting for the health and lives of their patients and for dealing with a host of problems that the unreformed healthcare system generates. Patients have to wrestle with long queues outside surgeries of general practitioners who are virtually buried with red tape since electronic healthcare is still unavailable in Bulgaria. In the meantime, Bulgaria is among the leaders in cardio-vascular diseases; cancer incidence has been rising, diabetes type 2 has been found in younger people, and to make things even worse, overweight and obesity levels have gone up. The way out of these black lists is by effecting changes to the way of life and eating habits, as well as to launch measures for prevention of socially relevant diseases. Hopes are pinned on young doctors.

Do Bulgarians as patients feel secure about their health? Radoslav Nakov, a sophomore from the University of Medicine in Sofia, replies with “yes”. One thing that worries him is the broken connection between the Health Fund, specialized doctors and clinical pathways. Radoslav also comments that there are tensions between doctors and patients. He has seen that while taking internships with GPs. He says that too much paperwork spells a lot of frustration for them. This situation prevents doctors from giving enough time to their job proper: i.e. treatment of patients. Radoslav hopes that until he graduates, things will become better regulated. And he believes that doctors deserve much higher remuneration for their knowledge and skills.

English version: Daniela Konstantinova