In the 53 countries of the WHO European Region, 1.4 million people die every year from causes related to pollution and climate change. Last year alone, as many as 20,000 people died from extreme heat in what was Europe’s hottest summer on record.
These are the new data from the World Health Organization which will be discussed from 5 to 7 July in Budapest, at the seventh ministerial conference on environment and health in Budapest.
“Preventing over one million deaths each year from environmental risk factors is within our reach, we know what to do, and now is the time to turn words into action,” said Hans Henri P. Kluge, Regional Director of the Organization World Health Organization for Europe. The new report also shows that in the Region Covering Europe and Central Asia, an estimated 570,000 deaths in 2019 were attributable to air pollution and more than 150,000 to household pollution. In 2020, some 77 million people lacked access to clean water.
While green spaces have a protective effect on health and can reduce mortality from natural causes by almost 1%. The ministers of the countries meeting in Budapest are expected to adopt a declaration with a series of concrete actions to prepare health systems to deal with the impact of climate change and reduce the health effects of pollution. In four priority areas — air quality, water and sanitation, chemicals and waste, and contaminated sites — progress has effectively stalled. “Health – concludes Csaba Kőrösi, president of the United Nations General Assembly – is a matter of policy-making, a matter of funding, of scientific progress, of technological progress and of how to build trust between us and how to rebuild our cooperation networks”.
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