Brazzaville, 3 February 2004 -- A technical consultation to review the national profiles on the status of children's environmental health in six African countries is to take place from 4 to 6 February in Cape Town, South Africa, hosted on behalf of the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) by the Medical Research Council of South Africa. 
The three-day meeting will review the methods for assessing the impact of environmental threats on children's health in the African Region, evaluate the results of the national profiles initiative and make concrete proposals fo+r addressing the needs identified. It is expected that the national profiles will provide an overview on the status of children's environmental health, identify the key threats and adverse effects suffered by the most vulnerable groups. The profiles will also show what actions have been or are being taken by different sectors within the country and will help countries identify challenges and propose solutions.

The national profiles were developed in six countries - Benin, Ethiopia, the Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Seychelles and Zimbabwe - with the support of the Swedish Expertise Fund. The information gathered from these six countries will be used to design interventions for implementing WHO's Healthy Environments for Children Initiative in the African Region.

WHO will also be launching a new publication on children's environmental health indicators at this event. "Making a difference: indicators to improve children's environmental health"1 forms an important part of the WHO's worldwide effort to monitor and address environmental risks to children's health successfully.

For the first time, public health officials will have a set of tools at their disposal to assess the risks from and take timely actions to prevent irreparable damage to children from environmental hazards.

The new indicators will, for example, help public health officials monitor children's exposure to air pollution by tracking the percentage of children living in homes using biomass fuels for cooking and the annual exposure of children to outdoor air pollution. The percentage of children living in households without basic services for water supply, hygiene and sanitation will be monitored as an indication of the dangers from unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene. The same approach is replicated for all major environmental risks to children's health.

"Often, to assess accurately how environmental hazards affect a child's - or anyone's - health, you need a combination of actions. Both the national profiles on children's environmental health and the indicators, will give health officials the world over a standardized and comprehensive means of tracking and addressing environmental health risks," said Margaret Chan, Director of the Department for the Protection of the Human Environment at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

The indicators are currently being piloted in the Americas, Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Cape Town meeting will launch their monitoring in Africa.

Environmental health is a serious and growing cause for concern in Africa where children face a wide array of environmental health threats.

The World Health Organization estimates that up to 70% of children who die in Africa succumb to diseases linked directly or indirectly to environmental risk factors. These include respiratory infection, diarrhoea, measles, malaria, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition. Some 20% of children born in the Region may not live to see their fifth birthday and many who survive are not likely to live to develop their full potential because of long-term disorders.

The six major classes of environmental risks for African children are: inadequate access to safe drinking water, poor hygiene and sanitation, disease vectors, air pollution, chemical hazards and unintentional injuries.

1Copies of "Making a difference: indicators to improve children's environmental health" can be obtained from Marketing and Dissemination, World Health Organization, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland. Tel: +41 22 791 2476. Fax: +41 22 791 4857. Email: publications [at] who.int

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