MoEF TO FOCUS ON ENVIRONMENTAL
HEALTH ISSUES
In a bid to give a boost to action
plans initiated by Shri T.R. Baalu, Union Minister for Environment
and Forests, 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, MoEF 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.
The Vision Statement emphasizes the need for protection of human
health against the growing hazards from vehicular pollution, bio-medical
and industrial hazardous wastes, ionizing and non-ionizing radiations,
heavy metals, pesticides, climate change etc. The objective of
the Vision Statement is to evolve a strategy for reduction of
health risks.
The Vision Statement
also stresses the need to modify the existing record and registration
system for treatment of patients in the nursing homes and hospitals
by including occupational environmental history in the treatment
of diseases. In addition, environmental health related subjects
are required to be added in curricula in all the technical and
medical institutions. It also recommends focused health risk studies
so as to have cause-effect relationship between the environmental
pollution and manifestations of various diseases.
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.
