World Health Day: Will pledges save Asia’s kids?

Every year, more than 5 million children ages 0 to 14, mainly in the developing world, die from diseases directly related to their environments. In Southeast Asia alone, more than 1.6 million children die before they reach the age of five.

Children here in Asia and elsewhere die of diarrhea, respiratory illnesses, malaria and other vector-borne diseases, injuries, and other environmental threats in and around their homes.

Children, health and the environment are three of the greatest assets that must be protected if we want to ensure sustainable development. Ensuring healthy environments for children is vital to our efforts to help shape the future of life.

Asia’s Safe Havens Threat to Children

Most often, children in Asian countries die of chronic undernourishment, gastro-intestinal and acute respiratory diseases, malaria and measles, according to the World Health Organization.

A high mortality rate in the Asian region is resultant of poverty, uncontrolled urbanization, a low level of education, insufficient efforts of the authorities, cruel treatment of children and their exploitation, poor housing conditions, anti-sanitary conditions and environmental pollution.

WHO data shows that about 100 million children have no access to safe drinking water in the region that encompasses 37 countries and territories of East Asia and the Western Pacific.

It’s quite ironic that, according to WHO, that the biggest threats to children’s health are found in the very places that should be safest – their homes, their schools and their communities – the places where they live, learn and play.

Children are our future; and a future of sustainable development begins with safeguarding the health of every child. They are more vulnerable than adults to environmental hazards. Their capacity to absorb health hazards is still developing, and thus they are more susceptible to the effects of toxic chemicals and to germs as well as other pollutants.

They are also more exposed to such risks because they consume more food, air and water than adults do in proportion to their body weight, and because they possess more natural curiosity but less knowledge and experience. The only sustainable response is to make sure that children can live, learn and play in safe environments.

This will not only save many lives; it will have positive consequences for economic development. It will prevent many children from being taken out of school due to chronic disease, and thus help society as a whole build the skill-base it needs for economic growth.

Taking children out of school, at least temporarily, was what the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) were doing in several Asian countries, such as Singapore and Hong Kong as well as the recent Influenza A (H1N1) virus and many other epidemics.

In 2003, Singapore shut all its schools on March 26, affecting nearly 600,000 children from kindergarten to junior college, in order to contain the SARS virus that has killed 119 people and infected over 2,960 people in some 21 countries.

Secondary schools for students between the ages of 13 and 16 were kept closed until April 14 of the same year, and primary school children were kept out of classes till April 16 during that year. The large-scale school closures are the first in Singapore since its former British colonial rulers gave children time off during a poliomyelitis outbreak in 1958.

Pledge to Protect Asian Children

A group of people, including scientists, doctors and public health professionals, educators, representatives of governmental and NGOs in South East Asian and Western Pacific countries, made a pledge in 2002 to promote the protection of Children’s Environmental Health in their meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.

Some Asian countries are still rampant to health problems affecting children. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is especially drawing attention to the continuing chronic malnutrition and other health problems faced by millions of children and women in war-torn countries.

According to UNICEF, Afghanistan ranks as the fourth worst country in the world in terms of under-five mortality, with one in four children not surviving beyond their fifth birthday. The infant mortality rate in Afghanistan is amongst the highest in the world, at 165 per 1,000 live births, while Afghanistan’s maternal mortality ratio is equally alarming at 1,600 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

In Indonesia, the health condition of children is also not encouraging particularly due to the prolonged economic problems that have been affecting the country since 1998. The infant mortality rate in Indonesia is still the highest in the Southeast Asian region. Before the economic crisis, the country managed to reduce the infant mortality rate from 60 to 49 per 1,000 live births in 1998. But within three years, it increased again to 51 per 1,000 live births in 2001.

In India, the world’s second most populous country, WHO launched a massive polio immunization campaign in the epicenter of the polio epidemic. To stem the epidemic and help eradicate polio, over 80 million children are to be vaccinated in six Indian states over the next six days.

The poliovirus was circulating in only seven countries around the world, reduced from over 125 when the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988. The seven countries with indigenous wild poliovirus were (from highest to lowest risk): India, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Niger and Somalia. Successful immunization campaigns are crucial to ensuring the eradication of this crippling disease.

In the late 1990’s, according to the World Health Organization, China lost up to a staggering 7.7% of its potential economic output because of ill health caused by pollution.

Two conditions linked to air pollution – chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lower respiratory tract infections – accounted for 1.9 million annual deaths for all ages – over 21% of all deaths in China.

China also has an estimated 2.7 million people suffering from skeletal fluorosis, an irreversible crippling condition that is caused by the consumption of fluoride-rich drinking water.

Silent Dangers

However, in addition to a healthy environment, according to UNICEF, a “protective environment” for children is just as crucial to their health and development. Children have the right to an environment that safeguards them not only against disease, but against ill-treatment. Violence, abuse and exploitation are “the silent dangers” that lurk in every society in the world, she added.

UNICEF points out that tens of millions of children suffer from severe abuse and violence each year. In the last decade, millions of children have died as a result of conflicts, and over the same period, 6 million have been injured or disabled in wars.

UNICEF advocates integrated approaches that combine interventions in health care and nutrition for children and mothers; clean water and proper sanitation; psychosocial care and early learning; and protection from violence, abuse and neglect.

Children must have every chance to survive and thrive. The risks that jeopardize the health and well being of children must not be limited to diseases and infections. Children must live in a protective environment that fortifies them against exploitation in the same way that good health and nutrition fortify them against disease.

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