Update 67

Update 67: "Water: preventing a crisis" - now available online

Nothing is more important for health than a supply of pure water. Diarrhoea, caused by a lack of safe drinking water, is the biggest killer of children and a major cause of sickness in adults world-wide. At any one time, half the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases.
In this issue:
Editorial - Water: preventing a crisis
How will water shape the 21st century?
Water as a public health good
Roger Aergeerts, WHO European Region (...)

Water as a public health good

Experts at the European Centre for Environment and Health in Rome describe the importance of water to health in the European Region of the World Health Organization (WHO). They highlight the challenges that need to be overcome to improve the current situation and introduce the policy instruments that exist in this region to achieve health goals.
The right to water forms part of the right to public health, which was first reflected in the WHO constitution adopted in 1946 and then (...)

Update 67 Editorial - Water: preventing a crisis

Nothing is more important for health than a supply of pure water. Diarrhoea, caused by a lack of safe drinking water, is the biggest killer of children and a major cause of sickness in adults world-wide. At any one time, half the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases.
Approximately 40% of the world’s population do not have access to safe drinking water. The challenge of meeting this human right and basic need is not getting any easier. Water is (...)

How will water shape the 21st century?

Increasing demand
The demand for water has doubled in the last 50 years. (1)
How is it used?
Worldwide, irrigation currently accounts for 70% of all water withdrawals. (1) In Europe, water use is 40% agricultural, 40% industrial and 20% domestic. (2)
Who takes care of their water?
At the bottom of the global listing (1) of 122 countries is Belgium, where raw sewage pours untreated into rivers where it mixes with manure from intensive livestock farms. Water quality should improve once a new (...)

Europe’s water law: stronghold against commercialisation

Governments wanting to achieve sustainable, safe water supplies should focus on implementing the Water Framework Directive and question the current pressures for water liberalisation, according to Stefan Scheuer of the European Environmental Bureau.
Europe’s water management is undergoing significant changes. Since December 2000, EU Member States have been obliged to implement one of Europe’s most complex and demanding laws - the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). This requires (...)

Privatisation arrives in Ukraine

Svetlana Slesarenok of a women’s organisation called MAMA-86 in the Ukraine has first-hand experience of the privatisation of the water utilities in the seaport city of Odessa. She describes how the take-over by a French multinational took place, says why she is against it and what she proposed to European Water Initiative improve public control over public-private partnerships.
Poverty is increasing in the Ukraine, and one of the reasons is the huge price increases charged for water. At (...)

Civil society unites on water policy

Non-governmental water experts, health advocates, local authority leaders and trade unions put up a unified front at the third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, 16-23 March 2003. They unanimously rejected a report from the development banks calling for dams and privatisation, and called for investment for the poorest of the poor with appropriate technology and public control of privately-funded water projects.
The World Water Forum in March 2003 aimed to promote action on the UN (...)

Resources on water and health

United Nations
A consortium of 23 UN agencies reported on the world water crisis on World Water Day, 22 March.
It is called "The World Water Development Report: Water for People, Water for Life". The report was released at the 16-23 March Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan., a landmark event of the 2003 International Year of Freshwater.
The International Year of Freshwater 2003 was launched to galvanise action on the critical water problems the world faces.
Thanks to gains in the (...)

Cancer epidemic blamed on nuclear power

A major review of the risks of radiation links nuclear pollution with increased rates of breast cancer and child leukaemia. This new assessment appears at a time when environmental groups are urging a reform of Euratom, the European nuclear energy treaty.
The present cancer epidemic is a result of pollution from nuclear energy and of exposures to global atmospheric weapons fallout, which peaked in the period 1959-63, according to a report from the European Committee of Radiation Risk (...)

Greek health minister backs "shared competence"

Greek presidency: 1 January - 20 June 2003
Mr Costas Stefanis, Greek Minister of Health and Welfare has emphasised his government’s support regarding the position of Public Health in the European Union Treaties. On Monday 27 January 2003 on the occasion of the exchange of views between Mr Stefanis and the members of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy in the European Parliament he expressed his commitment to pushing for health as a (...)

Affordable medicines threatened in Europe

To date the focus on access to medicines has understandably concentrated on the critical need to provide affordable medicines to developing and least developed countries. However, new EU pharmaceutical legislation presents a threat in the accession countries, which are highly dependent on non-brand name medicines at low cost, according to Greg Perry of the European Generic Medicines Association.
While the much-discussed TRIPS Agreement threatens access to medicines in the world’s poorest (...)