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HEALTH: Violence Is a Matter of Public Health – WHO

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 27 2003 (IPS) - The 192 member states of the World Health Organisation will begin implementing the agency’s recommendations to prevent violence, recognising the broader impacts of a phenomenon that claims the lives of more than 1.6 million people worldwide each year.

The health ministers who this week are wrapping up the annual sessions of the World Health Assembly, the maximum body of the WHO, have thrown their support behind an area of public health that has long been overlooked, according to the organisation’s executive director Derek Yach.

Until now, efforts to reduce violence lacked financial resources, institutional support and visibility, even though it is a preventable public health problem, noted Yach.

The WHO defines violence as the deliberate use of force or power, whether directly or as a threat, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community.

The definition adds that violence is the use of force capable of causing injury, death, psychological harm, slow development or deprivation.

Several studies indicate that violence is one of the leading causes of death amongst the population aged 15 to 44, and in general terms is responsible for 14 percent of all male deaths, and seven percent female deaths, noted Etienne Krug, WHO director for injury and violence prevention.

In the Americas, violence has long been recognised as a critical problem, and is reflected in the numbers: 150,000 homicides and 50,000 suicides committed annually, said Mirta Roses, director of the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO).

In Latin America, violence is closely linked with armed conflicts, as in Colombia, and with marginalized populations and poverty.

A significant aspect of the phenomenon is that in some countries in the region there are youth gangs, particularly groups of adolescents in urban areas, who become involved in acts of extreme violence, noted Roses.

The WHO has been conducting violence awareness and prevention programmes for the past seven years. In that context, the conclusions approved by the Assembly represent strong backing for recognising violence as a public health issue, says executive director Yach.

That interpretation might sound obvious to some, but there are large sectors of the population that still need discussion and education to understand the concept of violence as a part of public health, he said.

The Americas were a pioneer in formally recognising violence as a health issue, convening a regional congress on the problem in 1993.

But progress in the hemisphere in research and organising awareness campaigns has not stopped violence from escalating, said PAHO chief Roses.

The panorama in the 1960s and 1970s was characterised by institutionalised violence, particularly political violence. In later years, while poverty and inequalities deepened, especially in the 1990s, social violence also intensified, mostly in cities, she said.

The impacts of internal armed conflicts can be seen in the changes in life expectancy in El Salvador, for example, which was thrashed by civil war in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

>From 1980 to 1990, life expectancy for Salvadorans rose 12 years for men and 8.5 years for women, "an incredible peace dividend," commented Roses.

The latest research in the Americas reveal the magnitude of the problem of violence against women and children, which has prompted many countries to set up special police departments and courts to handle those cases.

Surveys conducted in Latin American cities found that around 40 percent of women respondents said they had suffered physical or sexual abuse by their partner or other relatives.

Children are also the victims of physical and sexual abuse. Recently, violence against minors and the elderly has been on the rise, going against the foundations of Latin American cultures, according to the PAHO official.

In the World Health Assembly discussions, the delegations from Greece and Germany have underscored the problems associated with increased violence against the elderly in their societies.

Representatives from Britain and Ghana expressed concern about the relationship between excessive alcohol consumption and domestic violence.

The Dominican Republic stressed the ongoing problem of violence against women and called for the inclusion of the gender perspective in confronting the issue. The U.S. delegation, meanwhile, focussed on the critical role of the family and of parents in working to reduce violence in the long term.