Physical well-being is a product of a clean and robust environment. A healthy population can, in turn, contribute to environmental conservation and sustainability efforts.

Human activity, however, continuously disturbs this balance.

Effectively, the degradation of ecosystems and their services caused by pollution, habitat change, overconsumption and exploitation of natural resources – in addition to climate change – can contribute directly or indirectly to illness and the subsequent loss of life. Such trends have been evident around the world ranging from Japan’s Minamata disease to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.

This is reason enough to seek effective solutions for Africans enjoy their right to a healthy life.

A business-as-usual attitude will not only hinder economic growth and development in the region and the world, but more importantly it will also cost lives as well as undermine the support systems of the world.

Presently environment and health responsibilities are mainly shared by agencies in those respective sectors. Better coordination is required between them to develop and implement effective programmes. Despite the magnitude of environmental risks to health, the capacity to assess and reduce these health risks is limited in many African countries. Sharing knowledge and experiences helps to manage widespread and shared issues. For this reason, a program facilitating knowledge sharing, long-term strategy development, and sharing of good practices will be of immeasurable assistance.