Children's health on agenda at European WHO conference

Mar 10, 2010, 13:41 GMT

Parma, Italy - A three-day conference of Europe's 53 members of the World Health Organisation (WHO) opened Wednesday in Italy, focussing on clean water, sanitation, air pollution and dangerous chemicals.

A declaration, to be signed on Friday, the conference's closing day, will commit governments to achieve clear goals by 2020.

The conference theme is: 'Protecting children's health in a changing environment'.

It includes a review of the impact of national and cross-border environmental policies on the health of the 890 million people covered by the WHO European Region.

'However, climate change, the global financial crisis and growing inequalities are putting a huge burden on national governments, making it more important than ever to agree a new way forward,' WHO Regional Director for Europesays Zsuzsanna Jakab, said.

Two reports are being released at the conference. The first shows diarrhoeal diseases among young children have been cut to 20 per cent of previous levels in recent years, largely through improved access to clean water and sanitation.

It also indicated that traffic-related deaths have fallen by 40 per cent since the early 1990s.

After a switch to unleaded petrol across most of the region, and a subsequent 90 per cent cut in lead emissions, lead levels in children's blood also dropped, the first WHO study also showed.

In its second study, the WHO compiled evidence on inequalities in environmental risk across Europe which pointed to 'significant variations' within countries, and even cities, in the social distribution of environmental exposure and related deaths and disease.

Poorer people who are can be significantly more exposed to avoidable environmental hazards - in some cases over twice as much as their wealthier peers, in all countries in the European Region, the study showed.