by Agence France-Presse
Urbanization in the third world: Haitian slum outside of Port-au-PrinceGENEVA – The U.N. health agency on Wednesday launched a global “1,000 cities, 1,000 lives” drive to combat a triple threat to health in fast-growing urban areas, now home to more than half of the world’s population.
The World Health Organization predicted that most population growth in coming decades will take place in overcrowded, polluted, and often impoverished cities that house a concentrated array of the health problems faced by local societies.
“Urban health matters in critical ways for more and more people,” said WHO Director General Margaret Chan on World Health Day, urging cities to place health concerns at the centre of their planning. “Poor health, including mental health, is one of the most visible and measurable expressions of urban harm,” she told a WHO meeting.
The world’s urban population passed 3 billion in 2007, exceeding the rural population for the first time, according to the United Nations.
The WHO warned that urban areas condense a threefold burden: infectious diseases exacerbated by poverty; chronic diseases such as heart trouble, cancers, and diabetes fueled by smoking, unhealthy “convenient” diets, and sedentary lifestyles; and injuries caused by accidents or crime.
One of the WHO officials behind the drive, Lori Sloate, said a global network of cities could influence urban planning and management, “while there’s still time because we’ve just passed the tipping point.”
By 2030, six out of 10 people will be city dwellers, rising to seven out of 10 people by 2050, with explosive growth in Asia and Africa, according to Chan.
“In many of these cities, slums have become the dominant type of human settlement,” she warned. “Slums are productive breeding grounds for TB, hepatitis, dengue, pneumonia, cholera, and diarrhoeal diseases that spread very easily in highly concentrated populations.”
Big cities are also growing far more quickly than in the past, outpacing the ability of authorities to build or plan for essential infrastructure including adequate health services, water, and sanitation, the WHO said in a report.
Living and working conditions vary widely both within and between cities across the world and are the “causes of the causes” of ill health, according to the agency.
The WHO warned that cities in both rich and poor nations can house huge disparities in health. They include a 28-year difference in the life expectancy of people living in different neighborhoods within Glasgow, Scotland. Meanwhile, in Nairobi, a child living in a slum is four times more likely to die before the age of five than one in another part of Kenya’s capital.
Chan called the concentration of poverty in cities an “ominous trend.”
“In developing countries, the best urban governance can help produce 75 years or more of life expectancy,” she said. “With poor urban governance, life expectancy can be as low as 35 years.”
Some 1,300 cities in 120 countries have come forward to join the year-long campaign starting on World Health Day, a WHO spokeswoman said. The agency is encouraging them wage clean-up campaigns, foster exercise in parks, and open up public spaces by closing off portions of streets to traffic.
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