Welcome to the final HEAL newsletter of the Year

This month, Environment Ministers and European Parliamentarians (MEPs) have agreed new measures to reduce outdoor air pollution, including commitments to enact and report on special measures to address the needs of vulnerable groups. This is potentially good news for those suffering from respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and for children whose health is more affected by poor air quality. The achievement is the result of a cross-party initiative of MEPs (Corbey, Bowis, Hassi, Ries) working with Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas to link air quality to children’s health. The new legislation calls for specific actions to reduce children’s exposure, highlights and evaluates what works best, and records what each Member State is doing to protect the most vulnerable. This achievement represents a concrete contribution to implementation of the World Health Organization (WHO) Children’s Environment and Health Action Plan on air quality standards in EU Member States.

However, the Brussels deal on air quality is not perfect. It does not fully reflect WHO Air Quality Guidelines and the deadlines for meeting existing air quality standards have been set back by three years. The challenge now is for Europe’s leading researchers and others to monitor implementation and enforcement in preparation for the 2013 review. Meanwhile, HEAL will work closely with the European Lung Foundation, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and the European Federation of Allergy and Airways Diseases Patients’ Associations (EFA) to ensure that the mandatory information requirements for health and patient groups are fulfilled. Another key advocacy area will be ensuring that the linkages between climate change and air pollution are more fully understood by decision makers.

As the world tunes to the global discussions about tackling climate change taking place in Bali, HEAL welcomes the greater prominence given to the health impacts of climate change (download the HEAL Briefing) and especially praises the WHO’s work in moving this agenda forward. WHO plans to dedicate World Health Day 2008 to “climate change as the defining issue for public health during this century”.

The recent address of Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General lays out the urgency of addressing human health needs in an era of climate change. She says: “Up to now, the polar bear has been the poster child for climate change. We need to use every politically correct and scientifically sound trick in the book to convince the world that humanity really is the most important species endangered by climate change. This century, climate change - a fifth horseman, a new threat of a magnitude unknown to human experience - will ride across our promising landscape of public health. It will ride on a collision course with all the fits and starts of our progress, sometimes fragile, sometimes fundamental.”

Wishing you a healthy and happy holiday season!