Child development

Children represent the future, and ensuring their healthy growth and development ought to be a prime concern of all societies. Children are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition and infectious diseases, many of which can be effectively prevented or treated.

Children are our future, numbering over 2.3 billion worldwide (aged 0-19) and representing boundless potential. Child survival and development hinge on basic needs to support life; among these, a safe, healthy and clean environment is fundamental.

Children are exposed to serious health risks from environmental hazards. Over 40% of the global burden of disease attributed to environmental factors falls on children below five years of age, who account for only about 10% of the world's population. Environmental risk factors often act in concert, and their effects are exacerbated by adverse social and economic conditions, particularly conflict, poverty and malnutrition. There is new knowledge about the special susceptibility of children to environmental risks: action needs to be taken to allow them to grow up and develop in good health, and to contribute to economic and social development.

• Each year, at least three million children under the age of five die due to environment-related diseases.
• Acute respiratory infections annually kill an estimated two million children under the age of five. As much as 60 percent of acute respiratory infections worldwide are related to environmental conditions.
• Diarrhoeal diseases claim the lives of nearly two million children every year. Eighty to 90 percent of these diarrhoea cases are related to environmental conditions, in particular, contaminated water and inadequate sanitation.
• Nearly one million children under the age of five died of malaria in 1998. Up to 90 percent of malaria cases are attributed to environmental factors

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