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Johannesburg, September (GYRP) – Almost 5 million children die each year from preventable causes. Environmental hazards kill the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of children every 45 minutes.
These scary statistics have spurred the World Health Organisation (WHO) to launch a new movement to try and tackle the crisis and to reduce by two/thirds the under-five deaths by 2015.
Under WHO Director General, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, the movement is busy mobilising partners in the form of key organisations and governments to achieve results in six areas:
· Household water quality and availability
· Hygiene and sanitation
· Indoor and outdoor air pollution
· Disease vectors, like mosquitoes
· Chemicals
· Accidents
According to Brundtland, the provision of healthy environments for children was going to be one of the highest social and political priorities of the decade.
“Our top priority must be in investing in the future of children, a group that is particularly vulnerable to environmental hazards,” she said.
Brundtland identified ‘hazards’ as being dangers present in the environments in which children live, learn and play.
She added that increased industrialisation, explosive urban population growth and lack of pollution control were just a few added factors which affected children’s lives.
Poor children were most at risk because poverty further aggravated the environmental hazards.
© GLOBAL YOUTH REPORTERS PROGRAMME
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Lauren Kansley
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