CENTRE TO SPREAD ENVIRONMENTAL
HEALTH AWARENESS THROUGH MASS MEDIA
In a bid to
give a boost to action plans for protection human health from
environmental pollution and to synergise the efforts of various
agencies, the Inter-ministerial Coordination Committee on Environment
and Human Health met for the first time under the chairmanship
of Shri Navin Chawla, Special Secretary, Ministry of Environment
and Forests here recently. Representatives from several Ministries/Departments
e.g., Health, Labour, Human Resources Development, Information
& Broadcasting, Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR)
and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) took
part in the meeting.
The meeting was aimed
at sensitizing the concerned Ministries/Departments to internalize
environmental considerations and consequential health impacts
in their various activities and programmes as also to seek their
support for giving fillip to the envisaged activities of MoEF
in the field of environmental health. In the meeting priority
areas of action for protection of human health were identified
based on the Vision Statement on Environment and Human Health
prepared recently by the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
It was decided that
each stakeholder Ministry/ Department would send all relevant
information to the MoEF so that duplication of efforts or programmes
could be avoided while initiating activities in the field of environmental
health. It was also decided that mass media, especially print
and electronic media, would be used in a big way to spread environmental
health awareness amongst the public at large and women and children
in particular.
Thrust areas identified
for initiating environmental epidemiological health studies include
health risk studies due to heavy metal pollution, pesticides,
vehicular pollution, arsenic and fluoride contamination of ground
water, indoor air pollution, noise induced hearing losses etc.
Policy interventions were also considered necessary for avoiding
food contamination, phasing out of asbestos products, pollution
problems posed by industrial complexes and protection of children’s
health engaged in bidi, match and cracker manufacturing units.
