Chapter 1 - Preamble

Section 1 - Social & Economic Dimensions
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

Section 2 - Conservation and Management of Resources

Section 3 - Strengthening the Role of Major Groups

Section 4 - Means of Implementation

Complete text of Agenda 21: Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Protecting and Promoting Human Health

Human health depends on a healthy environment, including clean water, sanitary waste disposal and an adequate supply of healthy food. We must care for both human health and the health of our environment.

Among the challenges facing the world:

• At least 15 million children a year die from such preventable causes as birth trauma and asphyxia, acute respiratory infections, malnutrition and diarrhea. Youths are increasingly vulnerable to drug abuse, unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
• Most women in developing countries lack the means to improve their health and socio-economic status, or control reproduction. They continue to face increasing poverty, malnutrition and general ill-health.
• Despite development of vaccines and other medicines, many people still suffer from such diseases as polio, cholera, tuberculosis, leprosy, diarrhea, malaria and schistosomiasis. These result from a lack of housing, clean water and sanitation, combined with inadequate health care.
• In many regions, urban growth has outstripped society’s capacity to meet human needs, leaving hundreds of millions without adequate livelihood, food, shelter or other services. Urban pollution is linked to illness and death, while overcrowding and poor housing contribute to tuberculosis, meningitis, respiratory and other diseases.
• HIV is expected to infect 30 to 40 million people by the year 2000, creating a pandemic that will affect all countries. This AIDs-related virus will substantially increase health costs, but the costs in lost income and the decreased productivity of working people will be even higher.
• Pollution, from such sources as energy production and use, industry and transportation, affects the health of hundreds of millions of people. Despite some improvements, environmental deterioration continues, because pollution controls have not kept pace with economic development.
• Indigenous peoples, whose traditional lifestyles have often been fundamentally changed, suffer higher than average rates of unemployment, poor housing, poverty and ill health.

Good health depends on social, economic and spiritual development, and a healthy environment, including safe food and water. The world needs to use a broad-based campaign against ill health, ranging from training in molecular biology to educating mothers on how to prevent and treat diarrhea at home. People need health education, immunization and essential drugs. Health care should be adapted to local needs, and local people trained to maintain and repair medical equipment.

Within the overall strategy to achieve health for all by the year 2000, some major goals for the world are:

• Eliminate guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) and polio, and control onchocerciasis (river blindness) and leprosy.
• Mobilize and unify national and international efforts to control HIV infection.
• Control tuberculosis, especially the new drug-resistant varieties.
• Provide 95 per cent of the world’s children with treatment for acute respiratory infections.
• Cut the number of deaths from childhood diarrhea in developing countries by 50 to 70 per cent.
• Have anti-malaria programmes in all countries where malaria presents a significant health problem.
• Reduce measles deaths by 95 per cent by 1995.

Every country needs a health action plan that includes a national public health system. Countries need to:

• Have a national health watch able to monitor and forecast the introduction of or increase in communicable diseases.
• Develop community-based health care systems that meet basic health needs for clean water, safe food and sanitation.
• Ensure men and women of the same right and means to choose responsibly the number and spacing of their children.
• Provide children with basic health care, including immunization and nutrition, and protect them from sexual and workplace exploitation.
• Use effective traditional knowledge in national health care systems.
• Develop programmes to control outdoor and indoor forms of air pollution, and to dispose of solid wastes safely.
• Control the distribution and use of pesticides to minimize health risks.

All countries should have programmes to identify environmental health hazards and reduce the risks. They need to make environment and health safeguards part of national development programmes, and train people to deal with environmental health hazards.

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