Children's environmental health units
Overview
Health care providers are well placed to detect, treat, and prevent
environmentally-related diseases and health conditions. Few mechanisms
and structures are in place to enhance the recognition of environmental
influences on human health, serve as repositories and sources of information
for those concerned about children’s health and the environment, and
promote action towards healthier and safer environments for children of
today and adults of the future.
For health professionals to effectively protect children from environmental
threats, specialized training is useful.
Evidence shows that health
providers are generally not provided the training that they need to
address the complex environmental health issues with respect to air,
water, soil, and products (Pope & Rall, 1995) Diarrhoeal diseases often
recur frequently when underlying causes such as contaminated water
are not taken into account by the health provider, understood by the
community or adequately addressed by governments.
The complexity
of children’s environmental health (CEH) issues is compounded by the
combination of legacy environmental issues, such as water quality and
sanitation service delivery, with modern challenges such as transboundary
contamination by persistent toxic substances, ozone depletion and hence
ultraviolet and ionising radiation, global climate change, and exposure to
endocrine-disrupting chemicals). For children in developing countries,
the presence of all such risks represent a ‘triple burden of disease’ – a
high level of communicable diseases, the increasingly severe burden of
non-communicable diseases, and emerging risks from new diseases and
additional stressors from the social and physical environment.