Ahead of the World Health Day, the United Nations health agency has called for accelerated action to preserve and protect health and mitigate the climate crisis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) spelled out in a press release on Wednesday that 99 percent of people globally breathe unhealthy air mainly resulting from burning of fossil fuels.

The agency noted that extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, land degradation and water scarcity are displacing people and affecting their health.

It added that pollution and plastics have made their way into the food chain and human blood streams.

"The climate crisis is a health crisis: the same unsustainable choices that are killing our planet are killing people," said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "We need transformative solutions to wean the world off its addiction to fossil fuels, to reimagine economies and societies focused on well-being, and to safeguard the health of the planet on which human health depends."

The WHO pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fault lines of inequity across the world, underlining the urgency for creating sustainable, well-being societies which do not breach ecological limits and which ensure that all people have access to life-saving and life-enhancing tools, systems, policies and environments.

The World Health Day is celebrated each year on April 7, coinciding with the anniversary of the founding of WHO in 1948.

The day is aimed at drawing attention to specific health topics of concern globally.

The 2022 World Health Day will be celebrated under the theme; "Our planet, our health."