World Health Day 2025 and our Environment

Dr N Munal Meitei *

Healthy citizens are the greatest assets any country can have –Winston Churchill.

Health is wealth. The better natural environment is for a healthy life. But the health of mother earth and living beings are equally important. World Health Day is celebrated on 7 April every year to mark WHO's founding since 1950.

The theme for this year is “Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures”. This theme focuses on enhancing the health and survival of mothers and newborns with the goal of increasing awareness of avoidable maternal and infant deaths.

Health depends on quality food, safe drinking water and adequate shelter. All these essential things are provided by the natural environment. This relationship is indispensable by the fact that our surroundings, including physical, chemical, biological, social and psychological factors, directly impact the human health for the present and future.

Pollution is taking away our right to breathe clean air and it is claiming a life every 5 second. Exposure to environmental hazards like pollution, toxic chemicals and biological agents can negatively impact human health, leading to various diseases and health problems. Unmanaged water triggers epidemics and numerous diseases. Natural disasters like storms, hurricanes and floods kill people.

By disrupting the delicate ecological balance that regulates air, water and nutrient cycles, we risk the entire food chain and human health. Agriculture pesticides that enhance food production have affected both the farm workers and all of us who consume it. Modern medicine promised to solve many health problems but induce numerous side-effects and resistant strains by changing their behavior.

Every breath we take, every sip of water we drink, connects us to the natural world. A clean environment is essential for human health and well-being. However, the interactions between the health and environment are highly complex and difficult to assess.

The best-known health impacts are attributed to climate change, unsafe water and sanitation, vector-borne diseases, ambient air & indoor pollution, toxic hazards, loss of biodiver- sity, land degradation and environmental challenges. Depletion of ozone layer also impacts on global climate and human health, increasing the amount of UV radiation reaching the Earth.

Simply for preparing a meal, 4.3 million people mainly women and children die every year. Unsafe water or insufficient hygiene result in 3.5 million deaths worldwide, representing 25% of the deaths of children below 14 years.

WHO cautions, 250,000 additional deaths could potentially occur each year between 2030 and 2050 as a result of climate change. Environ- mental degradation is estimated to cause 174–234 times as many premature deaths occur in conflicts annually. Mental health issues also rank among the ten largest non-fatal threats in most countries.

In India, one in every fifth child under age of 5 die due to diarrhoea. Basic environmental needs do not reach over 1000 million people living in abject poverty. Heat waves also cause illness and death to elderly persons who are having heart or respiratory diseases. Thus, environmental hazards kill thousands every year. But while the victims share a common fate, their problems are not reflected in Government policies and decisions.

The assumption that the only indicator of human progress is economic growth is not true. We expect urbanization and indus- trialization will bring in prosperity, but in the long run human value and environment are the priority.

The nature is the only resources for our production and consumption function. It provides land, energy, water and raw materials. We cultivate land and we extract oil and gas and other minerals from nature. In a nutshell, we need nature as a source for production and consumption but we never think their limitation.

When the harvest exceeds the bearing capacity, it will affect the regeneration capacity. Population growth and the resources are being over-exploited; it will threaten environmental integrity and affects the health of every individual.

Similarly, nature has the capacity to transform waste into useful materials. However, when the composition and amount of waste exceeds the capacity of the nature to transform, the waste accumulates and changes the nature into a waste belt challenging the human health.

Economic inequality and environmental changes are inter connected. Poor countries are unable to meet required emission standards to slow down climate change. They also bear the economic cost of lost productivity, the burden on the health, degraded resources and long-term social consequences.

Development strategies that do not incorporate ecological safeguards always lead to ill health and can’t promote healthy environment. Better health can only come from more sustainable environmental management.

Changing agriculture patterns away from harmful pesticides, herbicides and insecticides with alternatives like bio-pesticides will give the positive health. There is need to change from using conventional to green energy like solar, wind and ocean power. Providing clean energy will lead to better health. Poverty is closely related to health and unhealthiness is the consequence of improper environmental management.

As we know, human health and the environment are closely intertwined, influencing each other. Therefore, we need to count this inter-connectionand need to change our daily habits that impact the health of the planet.

Unless efforts are made to conserve and protect for our environment, the health of human and other living beings will never be safe. With celebration of World Health Day, we need to protect our environment for a healthy society.