UNEP chief warns against spread of diseases from animals to humans

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) called on countries on Wednesday to guard against the spread of diseases from animals such as Ebola and Zika virus as it launched a draft report outlining the link between the environment and health.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said with the poorest people mostly worst-affected by the failure to ensure a clean environment for all, the world risked falling into a bigger global disease burden, 25 percent of which could be attributed to environmental factors.

"There are indicators which speak to the linkages between health and environment," Steiner said in a keynote speech at the opening of a preparatory meeting of the U.N. Environment Assembly's (UNEA) Open Ended Committee of Permanent Representatives, attended by about 300 government officials.

Steiner said at least 1,000 children die daily from diarrhea due to poor sanitation and hygiene, including unsafe drinking water, and the impact of El Nino weather which had affected 60 million people in 2015-2016.

He added that the changes in the environment had also altered the disease patterns in a way that saw diseases previously found exclusively in animals spreading to mankind due to poor land use policies.

"The movement of these diseases from animals to human beings shows the movements in the land-use policies," Steiner said before the ambassadors and a few ministers of environment attending the meeting.

The Nairobi meeting will prepare the main agenda for the UNEA Ministerial Summit in May this year to discuss approaches against climate change, land use policies and a broad range of approaches required to deal with biological and chemical pollution around the world.

"It is clearer than ever that the anthropogenic land use change impacts infectious disease transmission in human and animals through alteration of the host and vector community composition, changes in behavioral and environmental contamination," Steiner told the meeting.

The UNEP chief said the spread of Zika Virus which affects newborns has sent a strong signal of the need to effectively deal with the link between the environment and health, noting that the spread of such environmental diseases were an indication of the changing patterns in populations and trends which require urgent intervention from both environmentalists and health experts.

"We are discovering every day the importance of biodiversity for medicine. The disasters which are sadly occurring across the world demonstrate how the role of communities in preventing and preparing for disasters is crucial for limiting impacts on human health and well being," Steiner said. Endit