(HEMA) Initiative. - OAS

PREVIOUS DOCUMENTS Base Document for the Meeting of HEMA
• Monitor adherence to legal frameworks and encourage the reduction of mercury and lead
emissions.
This integrated field of activity’s links Health and Environment -on a priority basis- with Labor
Ministers and production sectors as well as the economy.
The priority area in children environmental health is associated to the priority assigned to health
hazards affecting children at home, in their environment or at school.
They reflect the follow-up commitments undertaken at the Johannesburg Sustainable
Development World Summit and at the Environmental Health Alliance of the Nations.
The environmental health of children was defined as an urgent priority by reason of their vulnerability
to the impacts of environment degradation.
Children’s exposure to chemicals at the time of their critical psychophysical development, as
well as lack of safe water and sanitation, combined with poverty situations, produce severe
impacts on their health in the long term.
The development of healthy environments (housing, environment and schools) and the incorporation
of practical hygiene practices at school, are an obvious line or work in that direction.
To this end, the development of a strategic alliance between Ministers of Education is of relevant
importance.
Finally, one of the needs envisaged at the MiSAmA Meeting in Ottawas was that of finding the
way to evaluate environmental hazards to human health; to improve the Region’s epidemiologic
surveillance; and to enhance the advice provided to decision makers in these areas. Also established
as an objective, was the development of indicators enabling to improve environmental
monitoring and forecasting, to evaluate the living conditions of the population and contribute to
the implementation of sustainable long-term policies.
This gave birth to the idea of developing a methodology to carry out comprehensive Evaluations
of health and the environment in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Pan American Health
Organization, the United Nations Environment Program and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation were
left in charge of this initiative, with the assistance of regional experts.
This objective has been met. The evaluation of existing methodologies for “comprehensive
evaluations” addressed to learn and evaluate what has already been done in this field and to perfect
and adapt these methodologies to suit the realities in Latin American and the Caribbean, with their
particular environmental health problems and priorities, has been completed.
Finally, a methodological approach was developed to allow the implementation of
Comprehensive Evaluations of Environmental Health problems in Latin America and the
Caribbean, in an aim to:
a. allow regional decision-makers to obtain relevant, reliable and sufficient data from these evaluations
to promote sustainable long-term policies and to remedy and solve regional environmental
health problems;
b. promote the establishment of reliable and comparable environmental monitoring and health
surveillance programs in the entire Region and make sure they follow the criteria set up in this
comprehensive approach; and
c. develop in the course of this monitoring process the instruments and comprehensive indicators
needed to fulfill all the objectives.
WHERE WE GO TO
The proponed actions to be considered by the Health and Environment Ministers of the
Americas focuses on efforts needed to achieve the commitments made and the expected results,
through concrete actions aiming to:
Consolidate Health and Environment integration, through:
• Strengthening and development of institutional capacity and cultural change of institutions at
32 | June 16 - 17, 2005 - Mar del Plata - Argentina