WHO Launches Initiative to Save Children

By Toye Olori

The World Health Organisation has launched a new initiative to save children by protecting them from physical hazards in their environment.

The initiative, 'Healthy Environment for Children', will involve various stakeholders, such as decision-makers, community leaders, teachers, health professionals, non governmental organisations (NGOs), the private sector and the families.

''Today, I initiate a mass movement for children's environmental health. Its ultimate aim is to prevent millions of annual deaths and disabilities in children, especially those of the poor, and improve children's quality of life,'' says Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Brundtland said that environmental hazards are on the rise. ''Increasing industrialisation, explosive urban population growth, lack of pollution control, unabated waste dumping, non-sustainable consumption of natural resources and unsafe use of chemicals affect the environment in which today's children live''.

One-third of the 13,000 child deaths that occur every day are due to the dangers of the environments in which they live, play and learn. Environment-related illnesses kill the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of children every 45 minutes. Children who manage to survive these threats may be physically disabled or mentally impaired for the rest of their lives, preventing them from reaching their potential and contributing fully to the development of their countries.

''In children under five years of age, unhealthy environments contributed to most of the 1.3 million deaths from diarrhoea; two million deaths from acute respiratory infections; one million deaths from malaria and other infectious diseases; and 400,000 deaths from injuries making a total of 4.7 million deaths in the year 2000,'' Brundtland disclosed.

The initiative will cover six main areas of environmental risks to children the world over. These are household water quality and availability; hygiene and sanitation; indoor and outdoor air pollution; disease vectors (e.g malaria-transmitting mosquitoes); chemicals (pesticides and lead) and accidents and injuries.

The initiative will mobilise a broad-based, popular, participatory movement; empower governments and their local partners to expand and scale up action, and foster co-operation among the world's nations and among different sectors within each country.

''Because the task at hand would be an insurmountable challenge for any single entity, the movement will be spearheaded by a global alliance of key institutions and organisations,'' she said.

So far, the government of South Africa and Doctors for the Environment (an NGO) have joined up. ''We know there are several others who want to join the alliance. Certainly we will be working with UNEP and UNICEF and the UN-Habitat. In that way we want to work across the U.N. system and with a number of governments, foundations, NGOs and scientific institutions''.

The alliance is expected to meet in the months immediately following the Johannesburg summit and will be fully functional by early 2003.