The World Health Organisation (WHO) has missed a crucial step in the battle to improve global health and meet health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Despite evidence that access to sanitation and safe water are crucial to public health the governing body of the WHO last week failed to include these life-saving measures in their final resolution adopted by member states.
The World Health Assembly met in Geneva to focus on global health and discussed how to accelerate progress on the health-related MDGs, Goals 4, 5 & 6 (reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases).
Earlier in the week a progress report submitted to the Assembly by the WHO Secretariat referred to the poor progress on sanitation and water access and its impact on health. However, the resolution adopted by the Assembly (EB126.R4 - Monitoring of the achievement of the health-related Millennium Development Goals) failed to translate this message into legally-binding action by Member States and the WHO Director General. Access to sanitation and water was left out of the final resolution.
WaterAid Senior Health Policy Analyst Oliver Cumming said:
"The WHO itself estimates that 10% of global disease burden could be prevented with safe water, sanitation and hygiene. Yet when it comes to taking action these foundations of public health seem to have been forgotten.
"With only five years left to achieve the MDGs, and with insufficient progress on the reduction of infant and child mortality, the global health community is missing a critical opportunity by overlooking sanitation and water. These basic services are critical in tackling some of the leading causes of child mortality such as diarrhoea which alone kills more children each year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
"With half of the developing world's hospital beds filled with patients suffering from sanitation and water-related diseases at any given time, this neglect compounds the challenges faced by over-burdened and under-resourced health systems.
"Unless we get serious about not just treating but also preventing disease, we have no hope of achieving the progress needed and thousands of children will continue to die each day from entirely preventable diseases."
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