Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - Every year air and water pollution and other dangers in the environment kill more than three million of the world’s children under five.
Industrialisation, increase in urban population, climate changes, increasing use of chemical products and environment degrade expose children of several generations to unimaginable health risks. Other causes of death are lack of access to clean water, insufficient drainage, swamps, air pollution.
Children under five are only 10% of the world’s population but their death rate is 40%. The main causes of death are diseases caused by environmental problems, assumption of substances harmful for their body weight and partly also due to their inability to protect themselves.
On the occasion of the 1st European Conference of Ministers of Health and Environment held in Budapest, Hungary, the Word Health Organisation WHO presented an Atlas illustrating the impact of the environment on the health of children. The atlas gives an overall view of the dangers threatening the world population and the reasons for the deaths of about 3 million children under 5 every year. With maps, charts and texts the WHO Atlas shows the dangers which children in the world have to face.
Every year unclean water causes intestinal diseases and the death of about 1.8 million people including 1.6 million children under 5. In Latin America and the Caribbean, l86% of used urban water flows into rivers, lakes and seas without being treated. In Asia the same is true for 65% of used urban water. The River Ganges receives 1.1 million litres of used water every minute. One gram of mud in non treated water can contain 10 million virus, 1 million bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts 100 eggs of intestinal worms. Intestinal diseases, cholera, typhoid are the diseases that can develop.
(AP) (28/6/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe:29; Parole:371)
