WHO Notes 81 News
self-esteem and leadership qualities among the local women: over the past 22 years, with particular emphasis on safe water sources and sanitation. As a result, hospital statistics show fewer infant and child deaths, better nutrition, and an overall decrease in birth rates and death rates. The villagers are justly proud of their achievements, which are sustained by the infrastructures created by the Attat Hospital.
Nominations for the 1993 WHO Award for Health Education in Primary Health Care should be sent to the Division of Health Education, WHO, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland, to arrive no later than 30 October 1993.
New drinking-water guidelines
More than half the world's population—nearly 3000 million people—are still exposed to water containing pathogenic organisms and are therefore at risk of water-borne diseases such as cholera, dysentery, guinea-worm disease, hepatitis, schistosomiasis, and typhoid. In addition, pesticides and industrial chemicals threaten to contaminate water sources. Provision of safe drinking-water has long been recognized by WHO as a prerequisite for health: the first international standards for drinking-water were published by WHO in 1958, and the most recent guidelines were issued in 1984.
Experts from 35 countries, with representatives from UN agencies, the European Economic Community, the water industry, pesticide manufacturers, and nongovernmental organizations, met at WHO Headquarters in Geneva in September 1992 to review existing drinking-water guidelines and advise on changes to be incorporated into the three-volume guidelines that WHO will begin publishing in 1993.
Safeguarding drinking—water supplies is a major health responsibility; even today, the greatest health risks are directly linked to ingestion of water contaminated with sewage. It is expected that different countries will have different
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priorities in their application of the guidelines, but participants expressed the hope that all governments would find a use for the new guidelines, either in setting drinking-water standards or in updating and expanding existing ones.
Tuberculosis on the increase
Globally, tuberculosis claims more than three million lives every year, and more than eight million new cases develop annually. More than 98% of tuberculosis-related deaths and 96% of cases occur in developing countries.
There are clear signs that tuberculosis, once on the verge of elimination in western Europe and the USA, is making a powerful comeback. A. recent WHO analysis shows nearly 400 000 new cases and an estimated 40 000 tuberculosis-related deaths every year in European and other industrialized countries, mostly among ethnic minorities and migrants, HIV-infected persons, and the elderly.
Up to the mid-19803, tuberculosis cases in industrialized countries were declining, and public funds for national control programmes were thus curtailed. The reversal of the trend in the USA first appeared in 1986, attributable in a large degree to AIDS: it has been proved beyond doubt that HIV triggers tuberculosis in persons with Mycobacten’um tuberculosis infection as the immune system is weakened. In European countries the reasons for a rise in tuberculosis are more complex and diverse; in some countries. it is due to increases among foreign-born immigrants.
In addition to the present problems of curtailed budgets and the associated HIV pandemic, lethal strains of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis have spread among persons in prisons and hospitals in France, Italy, and the USA. Thus the global effort, coordinated by WHO, to marshal resources for improved tuberculosis control is crucial to meet the new challenges.
World Health Forum": Vol 14 1993