🌟 Snapshot of Children's Environmental Health in #Eswatini
Based on the latest data and information from the Children's Environmental Health Dashboard, it's critical to highlight the pressing environmental health risks facing children in #Eswatini. Key takeaways include:
1. Nutritional and Health Challenges Across Age Groups:
➡ Under 5 Years: High prevalence of low birth weight, suboptimal breastfeeding, and iron deficiencies demands enhanced maternal and child health services.
➡Ages 5-14: Persistent issues with unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, and dietary deficiencies underline the need for robust public health policies and better community health programs.
2. Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH):
➡Critical Issues: A large portion of the population struggles without basic hand hygiene services and safe water, with data indicating that 76% lack basic hand hygiene facilities. Strengthening the WASH infrastructure is essential to curb the transmission of diseases.
3. Air Quality and Pollution:
➡Respiratory and Developmental Risks: Children are exposed to particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, increasing respiratory illnesses and developmental risks. Immediate enhancements in air quality standards and monitoring are imperative.
4.Lead Exposure and Climate Impacts:
➡Lead Poisoning: 45 years of healthy life are lost annually among children under 20 due to lead exposure, highlighting the need for aggressive environmental safety measures.
➡Climate Change: 18% of children under 18 years face over 4.5 heatwaves annually, underscoring the urgency for climate adaptation strategies and awareness programs.
5. Healthcare Infrastructure Needs:
➡Service Gaps in Healthcare Facilities: With 27% of healthcare facilities lacking basic waste management and 8% without water service, substantial investments are needed to enhance healthcare infrastructure to ensure safe and effective care.
🔍 Recommendations for Immediate Action:
➡Policy Enforcement and Development: Implement stringent policies to address nutritional deficits, pollution, and WASH inadequacies.
➡Infrastructure Investment: Allocate increased funding for the improvement of WASH facilities, healthcare services, and pollution control systems.
➡Education and Community Engagement: Launch public health campaigns to educate on the impacts of environmental risks including from climate changes and the importance of good hygiene practices.
➡Strengthening #SocialProtection Mechanisms: Integrate social protection programs with environmental health strategies to provide safety nets that support vulnerable populations, particularly children, against the socio-economic impacts of environmental health risks.
#Eswatini #UNICEF #ChildDevelopment #ChildHealth #PublicHealth #EnvironmentalHealth #ClimateChange #ClimateAction
New resource alert!
For the first time, you can see a comprehensive picture of how children around the world are impacted by factors like extreme heat, air pollution, lead poisoning, and road traffic injuries.
Data gaps remain, but this dashboard can help countries to begin prioritizing children's environmental health urgently.
Explore the Children's Environmental Health Dashboard and see how we can create a healthier future #ForEveryChild: https://uni.cf/45jG1ma
If our economics is what we do with our energy in our time, the meaning we seek to bring into our economics should logically derive from an understanding of the event at which both time and energy are no longer available. The purpose of meaning is evolution perhaps - and what can we evolve into from a human state? Perhaps a God state? What could that be like? A state of neutrality? A state of infinite possibilities? A state of purposelessness? Thoughtlessness? Speechlessness? Actionlessness? A state that doesn't pose the challenge of searching for meaning in our agency? Moksha? Something like a quantum state where the test is not to see if we can do meaningful work but if we can rid ourselves of all desire and therefore all thought and need to act. We can be the sum total of all possibilities at once only when we don't bring any one of those possibilities into existence. Knowing what the next level of evolution is for us humans, and knowing what catastrophic results our activities have wrought on Nature, the challenge is to act as if we have evolved while still in human form.