Chapter 6. Health and Environment: Challenges for the Developing Countries in the 3rd Millennium

Abstract

Health and a safe environment are basic human needs. Although human society is more able than ever before to secure good health for each community, it has not been realized everywhere. The contrast between the least developed countries, where more than 20% of children die before they reach the age of 5 and developed countries, where less than 1% of children will do so, indicates that we are far from doing as well as we would like or in fact could (WHO, 1997).
Environmental threats to human health are numerous and can be divided into traditional hazards associated with lack of development and modern hazards associated with unsustainable development. With time and economic development, the pattern of environmental health hazards and risks will move from the traditional to the modern causing what is known as a “risk transition”.
Many factors, the driving forces, create the conditions in which environmental health threats can develop or be averted. The conditions are a. o. rapid population growth, urbanization, consumption and production patterns. The most important factors however are ignorance, poverty, and inequity.
The atmosphere, fertile soils, freshwater resources, the oceans, and the ecosystems they support, play a key role in providing humans with shelter, food and safe water, and the capacity to recycle most wastes. However, human activities which use fresh water, land and agricultural development, industrialization and energy use, and the production of household wastes exert a mounting pressure on the ecosystems, causing continuing environmental degradations.
The challenge how to improve health and environment in developing countries comes down to education improvement and poverty alleviation.