Environment and Health: Poor Waste Disposal

There is no specific definition of the term environment. Environment is the state of human health and safety, conditions of human life, the food chain, cultural sites and built structures, which are, or are likely to be, affected by the state of the elements of the environment and the interaction between them. Other people define environment as everything that makes up our surroundings and affects our ability to live on the earth including the air we breathe, the water that covers most of the earth's surface, the plants and animals around us, and much more. In recent years, scientists have been carefully examining the ways that people affect the environment. They have found that we are causing air pollution, deforestation, acid rain, and other problems that are dangerous both to the earth and to ourselves. These days, when you hear people talk about “the environment”, they are often referring to the overall condition of our planet, or how healthy it is, sometimes how bad is it? Millennium Development Goal seven is addressing the issues concerning environment which state, ‘Ensure Environmental Sustainability’. Melnick et al. (2005a) explained environmental sustainability as the situation of meeting current human needs without undermining the capacity of the environment to provide for those needs over the long term. The MDG seven consider the satisfaction of present generation as well as for the future generation.

Health and environment are good friends. If the environment is well kept, organized and clean no people will suffer from diseases like diarrhoea or any water borne diseases. If it is the opposite is when you will hear people suffering from diarrhoea, cholera and many others. However, environment is the key determinant of human health. Poor waste disposal in urban areas is a great cause of diseases. Take the City of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania as a case study. Cities have multiplied and expanded rapidly worldwide over the past two centuries (McMichael, 2000). Dar es Salaam is one of the cities expanding at tremendous speed. Thus, many cities are sources of creativity and technology, and they are the engines for economic growth. Cities are also sources of poverty, inequality, and health hazards from the environment (McMichael, 2000). The city of Dar es Salaam with an area of 1,393 square kilometres has a more than 4 million people (URT, 2003). Many people in this city are living in slums where it is difficult to collect waste and even to empty or drain their toilets. What is done during rain seasons, people just empty or open their latrines and allow waste to go with water to the down streams. It is during rain time when your hear outbreak of disease like Cholera and Diarrhoeal, and many others. Urban populations have long been incubators and gateways for infectious diseases. In the city, every year people are dying because of diarrhoeal disease and respiratory infections. All these diseases are due to urban poverty and poor adaptation to various vector-borne infections to urbanization. If the environment is kept clean, and people are following the procedures of cleaning their environment, it is hard to hear people dying because of diseases caused by dirty environment.

We must develop policies that ameliorate the existing environmental problems and educate people on how to get rid of water borne diseases. Government should also be strict in collecting waste in time.

References:
Melnick, D., Kakabadse-Navarro, Y., McNeely, J., Schmidt-Traub, G. & Sears, R. 2005b.The MIllenium Project: the positive health implications of improved environmental sustainability. (pdf) The Lancet, Vol. 365, 723-725.
McMichael, A. J. 2000. Urban Environment and Health in a World of Increasing Globalization: Issues for Developing Countries. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. Keppele Street, London.
URT, 2003. National Bureau of Statistics. Tanzania