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HEALTH:
Paediatricians Turn Spotlight on
Environmental Risks
Marcela Valente*
BUENOS AIRES, (Tierramérica)
- How many childhood respiratory
problems are related to the fuel
used in homes for cooking? How
many cases of diarrhoea are the
result of drinking contaminated
water? How can we detect the
relationship between potential
exposure to lead and learning
problems in school?
"All populations are exposed to
different environmental threats,
but children are the most
vulnerable, and if they live in
conditions of poverty that
fragility it is enormously
exacerbated," said Jenny
Pronczuk, expert in
environmental health with the
World Health Organisation (WHO),
in a Tierramérica interview.
Science has proven the link
between exposure to certain
substances and the development
of disease, in the short and
long term. However, most doctors
only respond to symptoms, often
without realising that the
causes of a child's illness
remain.
Although in Latin America there
is now greater political will to
promote children's environmental
health, "there is still a long
way to go," according to
Pronczuk. "More training is
needed for health
professionals," she said.
WHO data indicates that 40
percent of the global burden of
diseases attributed to
environmental factors affects
children ages five and younger.
This fact is most alarming
because this age group
represents just 10 percent of
the world population.
Children undergo rapid growth in
their first years of life and
they have greater capacity to
absorb toxic agents. Their
breathing is faster and their
consumption of food and water is
proportionally greater than it
is for adults, so their
susceptibility to environmental
threats is greater.
However, many paediatricians are
not prepared to approach disease
from this perspective. "It is a
new focus that requires an open
mind," Daniel Beltramino,
president of the Argentine
Paediatric Society's health and
environment commission,
explained to Tierramérica.
Beltramino noted that just three
years ago, the Society's
workshops on this issue "were an
embarrassment." "There were just
20 or 30 of us interested in the
topic," he said. But earlier
this month in Buenos Aires there
was a seminar for specialists
from South America's Southern
Cone countries, and some people
had to be turned away after the
limit of 130 were registered.
"Health professionals are on the
front line in the battle to
detect when symptoms are the
product of the lack of access to
clean water, contamination of
soil, or the lack of planned
urban areas," said the expert.
To confront these problems,
experts in health, environment
and education from around the
world gathered in the Argentine
capital Nov. 14-16 for the
second International Conference
on Environmental Threats to the
Health of Children, and
culminated with an exhortation
"to transform knowledge into
action."
The event, sponsored by the WHO,
urged the broader dissemination
of available tools to improve
children's environmental health.
Beltramino laid out the
different strategies underway in
the region, such as degree
programmes in environmental
health for paediatricians --
which didn't exist four years
ago -- and the creation of
environmental paediatric units
in children's hospitals.
These units already exist in
hospitals in Canada, United
States and Mexico, and in the
past five months three opened in
Argentine hospitals. They
provide assistance, training and
research in children's
environmental health issues.
"If there is a fire in a paint
factory, [the unit doctors] are
entrusted with protecting the
children," the physician cited
as an example.
Beltramino also underscored the
importance of drawing up
"national profiles of child
environmental health" in order
to determine where the national
zones of risk and how to better
attend to the affected
population. Eighteen Latin
American countries have already
begun to put together these
profiles.
International cooperation would
permit follow-up of cases to
study the relationship between
environmental risk and disease,
which cannot always be detected
in the short term.
Industrialised countries are
conducting epidemiological
studies of cohorts (groups of
people who share some factor in
common) for various public
health questions. The new
approach would be to apply this
sort of follow-up in the long
term to understand the
relationship between environment
and health.
For example, experts study
samples of umbilical cord blood
from newborns, and then continue
to study the evolution of these
individuals through childhood,
adolescence and adulthood.
"The symptoms of contamination
from toxins can appear 20 years
after exposure," explained
Beltramino. "To know with
certainty to what extent a
specific toxin can produce
cancer, 500,000 cases are
needed," he said.
"That number of cases is
impossible to track in just one
country, but if we can agree on
a single methodology to work in
all countries, we can contribute
to a global study of the problem
with results from the short and
long term."
(* Marcela Valente is an IPS
correspondent. Originally
published Nov. 19 by Latin
American newspapers that are
part of the Tierramérica
network. Tierramérica is a
specialised news service
produced by IPS with the
backingof the United Nations
Development Programme and the
United Nations Environment
Programme.) |
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