Preventable Diseases Still Rampant Due to Poor Environment
5/7/98
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Title: Preventable Diseases Still Rampant Due to Poor Environment
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 5/7/98
Byline: Rosalind Russell
NAIROBI, May 7 (Reuters) - Preventable diseases are still rampant in Africa
because medical technology cannot keep pace with a worsening environment, a
United Nations report issued in Nairobi on Thursday said.
When it comes to health and the environment, African states face ``double
jeopardy,'' the report, which was launched by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), said.
Traditional health needs are yet to be met, while at the same time
deforestation, climate change and pollution pose new threats, it added.
It cited malaria as an example of the problem. The mosquito-borne disease
claims the lives of an estimated one to three million people each year, mostly
children and 90 percent of them in Africa.
But forest clearance for agriculture, a practice widespread in Africa and
elsewhere, leads directly to the spread of such diseases as malaria, said the
report, entitled ``Environmental Change and Human Health'' and co-authored by
UNEP, the World Bank and the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based
think-tank.
``Forest clearance can create new habitats such as depressions where water
can collect and mosquitoes, ticks and fleas can breed,'' it added.
In Africa, deforestation favours malaria transmission by the mosquito Anopheles
gambiae, which prefers to breed in the open rather than dense forest.
``In the Usambara mountains in northern Tanzania, forest clearing activities
along the mountaintops is considered one cause of the introduction and spread
of malaria along these hilltop sites,'' the report said.
It added that 2.5 million children die each year of diarrheal diseases linked
to contaminated water and food.
Africans have the poorest rates of access to clean water and proper sanitation
and their chances of surviving a diarrheal disease are also low.
Rapid, unplanned urbanisation in Africa has been the backdrop for the dramatic
increase in the last 20 years of dengue fever and its more severe, often
lethal, form dengue haemorrhagic fever.
The two primary mosquito carriers of dengue fever have adapted from their
natural forest habitat to the urban environment, where they breed in pots,
pitchers, drains and discarded vehicle tyres.
``This fact makes dengue particularly troublesome in cities of the developing
world, where between one third and two thirds of solid waste is not collected
but left on streets, in drains, or dumped in open landfills,'' it said.
In addition, acute respiratory infections thrive in overcrowded and unsanitary
household conditions, and indoor air pollution from smoky cooking fuels is a
significant killer in poor African countries.
While African emissions of greenhouse gases are lower than those of any other
region of the world, sub-Saharan Africa, where rain-fed non-irrigated
agriculture predominates, is highly vulnerable to declines in food production
due to climate change.
Agriculture in much of the continent is already marginal and rates of
malnutrition are high.
The negative effects of climate change on agriculture in already poor countries
could put an additional 40 million to 300 million people at risk of hunger by
2060, the report said.
``In Senegal, for example, one study predicts a 30 percent yield decline with
a four percent rise in temperatures and no change in rainfall from current
levels,'' it said.
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