After historic ratification, European countries meet for the first time
to improve
water management and curb water-related diseases
Geneva, 17 January 2007 -- Today, the Parties
to the Protocol on Water and Health1 to
the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses
and International Lakes are meeting in Geneva for the first time. Their
goal is to translate into action the Protocol’s provisions for the
coming three years. The meeting is expected to launch ambitious programmes
to prevent, control and reduce water-related diseases.
“This meeting of the Protocol Parties represents a key step of
a process intended to increase the number of European citizens with access
to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation,” says Dr. Roberto Bertollini,
Director of the Special Programme for Health and Environment of the World
Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe. “Access to
safe water is a basic human right ensuring the physical and social well-being
of populations, but it is still not attained in today’s Europe. How
can we accept to lose 37 of our children to diarrhoea each day for lack
of access to safe water? We therefore call on all countries to be bold
in the adoption of an Action Plan that will significantly reduce the current
water-related disease burden.”
“Water on tap is taken for granted in the developed world, but
the truth is that over 100 million Europeans still do not have access
to safe drinking water. Such a situation is unacceptable at the dawn of
the twenty-first century. Moreover, especially in the poorest part of our
region, the quality of water is declining,” says Kaj Bärlund,
Director of the Environment, Housing and Land Management Division of the
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). “Water is
a renewable resource with a limited capacity to recover from unsustainable
human activities. Any failure to respect those limits today will have a
high cost in terms of health and well-being tomorrow. If we do not want
to hold back human development, concrete actions need to be taken.”
The programmes to be decided on at the meeting include activities related
to the setting of targets under the Protocol and the report on progress
achieved; surveillance of water-related disease and response systems; the
human right to water and equitable access to safe drinking water; water
supply and sanitation and climate change adaptation strategies; and public
awareness and capacity-building activities.
Transboundary water resources play a vital role in the region: it has
several hundred transboundary water bodies, including rivers, lakes and
groundwaters, and countries depend on their neighbours for up to 90% of
their water. Thus international cooperation is crucial to ensure the sustainable
use of such resources.
The spread of diseases transmitted by water is especially common in Eastern
Europe, where 16% of the population still has no access to home drinking
water. Over 170,000 cases of water-related diseases were reported in 2006,
including cases of viral hepatitis A (over 120,000), Shigella bloody
diarrhoea (almost 40,000), enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli infection
(over 7,000) and typhoid fever (almost 6,000)2.
An epidemic of morbidity from water-related diseases is ongoing in the
countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.3 More
than half the rural population lacks a continuous supply of safe water
and/or an adequate sanitation system. Many people drink and use water from
wells, which is often contaminated. Most households have their own wells,
and toilets are often located too close to the wells and on higher ground
so that they pollute the wells. Disposal of wastewater in villages is an
urgent problem, and household waste is typically just dumped on a river
bank or near a road.
Where people in these countries – whether in rural areas or in
cities – do have a supply of drinking water, it is often of poor
quality and only available for a few hours a day. Poor water quality is
linked to poor sanitation, which leads to microbiological and chemical
contamination. As a consequence, water-related diseases take an unacceptable
toll in the European region and can easily lead to disease outbreaks, which
spread quickly due to inadequate hygiene and sanitation.
In Western Europe there is growing awareness of the importance of emerging
diseases and new challenges posed by global change. Projected more frequent
heavy rainfalls, increased periods of drought in the Mediterranean and
water stress in other regions, and global temperature increases in seas,
lakes and rivers – all of these may affect water quality and quantity.
This can lead to unexpected outbreaks of water-borne diseases, increased
harmful algal blooms and the creation of environmental niches for previously
unknown vectors.
The incidence of infectious diseases caused by poor-quality drinking
water is often highest in children aged 6-11 months. These aspects of implementing
the Protocol contribute to achieving the two Millennium Development Goals
of (1) halving by 2015 the proportion of the population not having access
to improved water supply and adequate sanitation, and (2) reducing
child mortality in the under-5 population by two thirds.
In the European region, the efforts by the Parties towards the implementation
of the Protocol’s provisions are supported jointly by the UNECE and
the WHO Regional Office for Europe.
More information on the Protocol is available on the UNECE website (http://www.unece.org/env/water/text/text_protocol.htm)
and the WHO Regional Office for Europe website (http://www.euro.who.int/watsan).
For further information contact:
|
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
UNECE
Francesca Bernardini
Environmental Affairs Officer
UN Economic Commission for Europe
(UNECE)
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Tel.: +41(0)22 917 2463
Fax: +41(0)22 917 0107
E-mail: [email protected]
WHO
Roger Aertgeerts
Regional Adviser, Water and Sanitation
WHO Regional Office for
Europe
Via Francesco Crispi 10
I-00187 Rome, Italy
Tel.: +39 06 4877528
Fax: +39 06 4877599
E-mail: [email protected] |
PRESS INFORMATION
UNECE
Jean Michel Jakobowicz
Public Information Officer
UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
CH - 1211 Geneva 10,
Switzerland
Tel.: +41(0)22 917 44 44
Fax: +41(0)22 917 05 05
E-mail: [email protected]
WHO
Cristiana Salvi
Technical Officer, Communication and Advocacy
WHO Regional Office
for Europe
Via Francesco Crispi 10
I-00187 Rome, Italy
Tel.: +39 06 4877543
Mobile: +39 348 0192305
Fax: +39 06 4877599
E-mail: [email protected]
Press
materials can be found on the Regional Office website (http://www.euro.who.int/mediacentre). |
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1 Currently 20 countries
have ratified the Protocol : Albania, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Croatia, the
Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Moldova, Norway, Portugal, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, Switzerland
and Ukraine.
2 Reporting systems in
the European region are not necessarily compatible, and data can be underestimated.
3Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Romania,
Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Ref: ECE/ENV/07/P02