Health is not a vacation we take once in a year: Amer Jaleel

The exchange4media group hosted the second edition of the Health Communication Conference yesterday, the 28th of June. The aim of the conference was to bring together the stalwarts and thought leaders of the health and wellness sector on one platform. The theme of the conference revolved around "Marketing, Communications & Brand Empathy In The Time of A Pandemic." 

The valedictory address at the conference was delivered by Amer Jaleel, Group CCO & Chairman, MullenLowe Lintas Group. The session was the concluding session of a power-packed conference. Jaleel opened his session by expressing gratitude towards the healthcare workers and sector for the immense work done in terms of Covid. He added “The health industry stood up during an absolutely trying time and made the rest of us very proud and grateful. This industry has always been a beacon throughout history and has moved ahead on its own.  With forward thinkers full of foresight, preparedness, and one can only marvel that if this industry had not been so agile and ready, what the state of the world.”

Further analysing what the concept of being healthy truly means in today’s environment, Jaleel goes on to share that health is holistic and not just an individual facet. He shared “We are health conscious and environmentally conscious but those two are two separate concepts in our head, they are not one somehow yet. We look after a body and it's helped in some ways. Similarly, some of us at any rate, do our bit too for the well being of the planet. We could fuse the two and somehow evolve to planet health as an idea, and if and when we truly start believing that and someone asks me ‘How are you?’, I will not be able to say ‘I am well, thank you’ because I am aware of the state of the art.

Delving deeper into the same, he added “We are all opportunist, but this opportunity is about meeting the prepared mind. People have seen the impact of their light on their life from a random event, they have understood the connection between disconnected events, and their far-reaching impact on us. This is the biggest available window for everyone to wake up to realize and internalize the fact that health is not a vacation we take once in a year. Health is not a subject. It's a necessary condition. Health is not an island. You cannot be healthy if your fellow human is not. If anything the pandemic has shown us this is not your job to jogging alone. It's the overall state of the earth.”

Concluding his session by proposing a silent beat, Jaleel proposed that it should be PHEALTH and not HEALTH that we should be concerned about as a concept.