NEWS 7 April: World Health Day
This April 7, World Health Day celebrates the theme 'Make Every Mother and Child Count'. The World Health Organization (WHO) chose the theme in order to focus the international community on the plight of women and children, who today are still not a high enough priority in many national policies. The theme also ties in with the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) which states that, by 2015, countries should reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality rate. Every minute, a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth. This adds up to 1,400 women dying each day-an estimated 529,000 each year-from pregnancy-related causes. Almost half of births in developing countries take place without the help of a skilled birth attendant.
In this UN Decade for Action 'Water for Life', the theme for World Health Day 2005 could not be more timely; access to clean, safe water, as well as basic sanitation, is essential to maintain an adequate state of health and living for mothers and children. Contact with contaminated water is a major source of illness and death among children under the age of five. In developing countries, there is one chance in 48 for mothers to die during childbirth, although many countries have now implemented safe motherhood programmes.
World Health Day 2005 invites administrators on a local, national, regional and international level to focus their attention on raising awareness, and improving education, health care, and living conditions for women and children.
For more information, visit the official World Health Day site
Launching of the Latin American and Caribbean Water Prizes - PLACA
CATHALAC has launched the Latin American and Caribbean Water Prizes - PLACA. The Prizes are designed to promote the International Decade for Action 2005 - 2015 'Water for Life' proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution A/RES/58/217 [PDF format - 29 KB].
The PLACA Water Prizes will be awarded annually to individuals, communities, organizations or businesses in honor of outstanding local, national or regional water-related achievements. Achievements can be in the areas of applied scientific research, engineering, technology development and transfer, or capacity-building activities that have made and continue to make fundamental contributions to the availability, quality, management and protection of water resources in the region.
This annual event will also include the PLACA Junior Water Prizes, aimed at stimulating the interest of Latin American and Caribbean young people in water-related activities. The competition is open to young people up to the age of 21.
More information
EVENTSAs 2006: Natural Arsenic in Groundwater of Latin America-Occurrence, Health Impact, Remediation and Management
20-24 June 2006, Mexico City, Mexico - Organizers: Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Institute of Technology and Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg Water, Health and Environment 2005
13-15 September 2005, Tanta, Egypt - Organizers: Water Engineering Department Faculty of Engineering, Tanta University 5th Convention on Environment and Development
4-8 July 2005, Havana, Cuba - Organizers: Government of Cuba Water Resources in the Mediterranean Basin (WATMED 2)
14-17 November 2005, Marrakech, Morocco - Organizers: University Cadi Ayyad (Marrakech) and University Hassan I (Settat) 2nd International Conference on the Mechanics of Unsaturated Soils
7-9 March 2007, Weimar, Germany - Organizers: The Laboratory of Soil Mechanics, Bauhaus- Universität Weimar (Germany)
DID YOU KNOW...? FACTS ABOUT WATER AND HEALTH- The World Health Organization's (WHO) global estimate of the number of deaths from infectious diarrhoeas in the year 2001 amounts to 2 million for all age groups, with a heavy toll among children under five: an estimated 1.4 million childhood deaths.
- The diseases and conditions of ill-health directly associated with water, sanitation and hygiene include infectious diarrhoea (which, in turn, includes cholera, salmonellosis, shigellosis, amoebiasis and a number of other protozoal and viral infections), typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, acute hepatitis A, acute hepatitis E and F, fluorosis, arsenicosis, legionellosis, methaemoglobinaemia, schistosomiasis, trachoma, intestinal helminth infections (including ascariasis, trichuriasis and hookworm infection), dracunculiasis, scabies, dengue, the filariases (including lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis), malaria, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile virus infection, yellow fever and impetigo.
- Every day, diarrhoeal diseases cause an estimated 5,483 deaths, mostly among children under five.
- WHO estimates that malaria kills over one million people every year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Worldwide, over 2 billion people are infected with schistosomes and soil-transmitted helminths and 300 million of these suffer serious illness as a result.
- In Bangladesh alone, some 35 million people are exposed, on a daily basis, to elevated levels of arsenic in their drinking water, which will ultimately threaten their health and shorten their life expectancy.
- Each year 19.5 million people are infected with roundworm and whipworm alone, with the highest rate of infection among school-age children.
- Schistosomiasis (bilharzia) is also a young people's disease; an estimated 118.9 million children under fifteen years are infected.
Information from: World Water Development Report 'Water for People, Water for Life'.
PUBLICATIONS RELATED TO WATER AND HEALTHWater and Ethics: Human Health and Sanitation [PDF format - 186 KB] (Essay 6 in Series on Water and Ethics) By Monica Porto © UNESCO - 2004 This essay is one of a series on Water and Ethics published under the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) of UNESCO.
'Human Health and Sanitation' discusses the close links between water and health and the ethical problems arising from this connection. It explores the interaction of poverty, sanitation and health and the recent attempts at the intergovernmental level to make real progress towards its solution.
Monica Porto is involved in teaching and research in Sanitary Engineering at the Technical University of Sao Paolo in Brazil.
Access the full Essay [PDF format - 708 KB] Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality [PDF format - 248 KB] (Third Edition) By World Health Organization (WHO) © WHO 2004 This new edition of WHO's Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality provides a state-of-art perspective on issues of water quality and health and on effective approaches to water safety management.
The guidelines are used by countries worldwide as a scientific basis for standard-setting and regulation and are used extensively by professionals and local decision-makers.
This fully revised third edition includes expanded coverage on systematic drinking-water safety assessment and management. It describes a 'Water Safety Framework' encompassing complementary functions of national regulators, water suppliers and independent surveillance agencies. The 'Water Safety Plan' provides a comprehensive approach to assist suppliers in water safety management.
This third edition also includes more information on application of the guidelines in specific circumstances (e.g. small community supplies, in large buildings, in emergencies and disasters); and to specific applications (e.g. bottled water).
Access to full document [PDF format - 248 KB]
LINKS
Links related to Water and HealthWater, Sanitation and Health (WHO) WHO works on aspects of water, sanitation and hygiene where the health burden is high, where interventions could make a major difference and where the present state of knowledge is poor: drinking water quality, bathing waters, water resource quality, water supply and sanitation monitoring, water, sanitation and hygiene development, water-related disease, wastewater use, healthcare waste, health in water resources development, emerging issues in water and infectious disease and household water treatment and safe storage. The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) The goals of the JMP are to report on the status of water-supply and sanitation, and to support countries in their efforts to monitor this sector, which will enable better planning and management.
This WHO and UNICEF website hosts information related to water supply and sanitation, which is both general and specific in nature, and provides a picture of the state of water supply and sanitation at different scales (global, regional and country), which enables you to 'zoom' in and out. Information is presented in the form of short texts linked to tables, graphs and maps. Pan American Center for Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Sciences (CEPIS) CEPIS is the specialized centre for environmental technology of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO). Its mission is to cooperate with the countries of the Americas to evaluate and control environmental risk factors that, directly or indirectly, affect the health of the population. The Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) To provide a coordinated global approach to fighting malaria, the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership was launched in 1998 by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank. The RBM Partnership's goal is to halve the burden of malaria by 2010.
Controlling malaria will contribute significantly to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which all 191 UN Member States have pledged to achieve by 2015. Beyond reducing the disease burden, a successful fight against malaria will have far-reaching impact on child mortality, maternal health, and poverty, which in turn may increase global stability.
Links to United Nations Actions following the 26 December 2004 TsunamiUN agencies swing into action with relief missions after Indonesian quake (Source: UN)
UN on alert after new Indian Ocean quake, calls for speeding up early warning (Source: UN)
Massive earthquake strikes Sumatra (Source: UNICEF)
Ninety days after the tsunami: UNICEF aims to 'build back better' (Source: UNICEF)
Asia quake spurs continued rebuilding of the Maldives (Source: UNDP)
UNDP's Response to the Tsunami in Malaysia (Source: UNDP)
Natural Disaster Reduction - Tsunami Response (Source: UNDP)
UN refugee agency winds up work in Indonesia's tsunami-hit region (Source: UNHCR)
Credit for tsunami-hit fisheries (Source: FAO)
Interview with Laura Kong: 'A significant number of lives could have been saved' (Source: UNESCO)
28 March earthquake: preliminary situation report (Source: WHO) ARCHIVESAccess the newsletter archives SUBSCRIBE & UNSUBSCRIBE For contributions or comments, contact the editor at waterportal@unesco.org
|
UNESCO.ORG
