WHO Urged To Include Environmental And Occupation Factors In Disease Prevention
A request has been made to the United Nations and the World Health Organisation from over 100 scientists, health professionals, civil society representatives and other stakeholders, led by Dr Annie J Sasco and André Cicolella from France, to tackle the challenge of non-communicable diseases by global action, especially in low-and-medium income countries, including environmental health factors and occupational disease prevention.
Published on the website of Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), the letter to both the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and the World Health
Organization Director General Dr Margaret Chan, argues for the inclusion of both occupational and environmental factors to be discussed as part of the debate on non-communicable diseases taking place this month:
"We consider it necessary for global health of the world population to also consider some other noncommunicable
diseases as well as other exposures, beyond the ones which are amenable to
behavioral interventions. Namely, we call for the inclusion in the UN resolution of neurologic and
psychiatric disorders as well as reproductive problems, in addition to cancers, diabetes, cardiocerebro-vascular and respiratory diseases, as they do represent a significant share of the morbidity
and are influenced by environmental risk factors.
We also urge for a serious consideration when
dealing with occupational factors of disease, of the issues of child labor as well as the specificity of
women in the work force, in terms of sensitivity to potential toxics during reproductive years while
also keeping in mind the issue of equal men treatment and pay at a comparable position and with
similar education, training and experience."
Alliance for Cancer Prevention, a UK based multi stakeholder group aiming to challenge the existing perception of control and treatment of cancer, supports the call on the WHO and the UN to include environmental and occupational factors in disease prevention.
Alliance includes representatives from NGOs, environmental and occupational health organisation’s, trade unions, public health advocates and civil society groups, to work together on cancer prevention. The Alliance aims to challenge the existing perception of control and treatment of cancer being the best way forward and get equal recognition for primary prevention and to ensure that the cancer establishment acknowledge the environmental and occupational risk factors for preventable cancers.
The Alliance participated in the WHO International Conference on Environmental and Occupational Determinants of Cancer: Interventions for Primary Prevention in Asturias earlier this year, where a call to action ( Asturias Declaration) acknowledged the substantial percentage of cancers caused by environmental and occupational exposures. The declaration calls for the primary prevention of environmental and occupational cancer in countries around the world.
The WHO and UN high-level meeting on noncommunicable disease prevention and control will take place in New York on the 19th and 20th Sept. Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) like heart attacks and strokes, cancers, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease account for over 63% of deaths in the world today.
In their press release issued last week, Alliance for Cancer Prevention said:
“We want to make sure that cancer is not classified as a ‘lifestyle’ disease, many cancer’s can be attributed to environmental and occupational exposures and, as such, are preventable. According to the May 2010 report to President Obama by the Presidents Cancer Panel, exposure to carcinogens at work and in the wider environment poses a serious threat , the full extent of the problem has been “grossly under-estimated” because of a lack of research.
We know from experience that the full answer does not lie only down the road of detection and pharmaceutical intervention, but also with primary prevention. We do not want our future to hold the inevitability of cancer.”
One of the recommendations from the Asturias meeting was to shift the paradigm to primary prevention in cancer control as a fundamental principle at global, national and regional level.
The Alliance wants to see environmental and occupational risk factors included and addressed in all Cancer Plans in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Source: FB Group We Didn't Vote To Die At Work / WECF / Alliance For Cancer Prevention
