To celebrate this year’s World Health Day, the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (formerly Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism) has announced a Twitter Spaces event to discuss the impact of environmental hazards on health.
Professor Nasir Idris of the Faculty of Environmental Science, Nasarawa State University Keffi will be a panellist, Vivian Chime, a Climate change reporter with TheCable newspaper will talk on the role of media in reporting climate change and health, and Dr Edwin-Isotu Edeh, National Consultant Public Health & Environment, WHO Nigeria will be available to illuminate the issues. The talk will be moderated by Akintunde Babatunde, Deputy Director (Development) at the CJID.
Since 1950, the 7th of April has been marked to commemorate the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organisation (WHO). This celebration conceived by the WHO is also actively celebrated by its member nations to raise particular issues of interest on selected themes in respect of those member states. Since taking off in 1950, World Health Day has brought light to maternal and child health problems and an increasing focus on emerging issues such as climate change.
To mark this day, CJID is organising a Twitter Spaces event to discuss health and environmental policy issues towards a purposive sustainable goal. The event today is in line with our support for a nation defined by wellness and a strong health sector in the midst of a devastating climate crisis.
This year’s theme, Our Planet, Our Health, serves as a timely reminder of the link between the planet and health, the current burden increase of infectious and non-communicable diseases alongside the growing numbers of climate-related challenges.
The WHO estimates that more than 13 million annual deaths globally are due to avoidable environmental causes, including the climate crisis.
In Nigeria, non-communicable diseases are projected to overtake communicable diseases, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional conditions combined, to become the leading cause of death by 2030. Additionally, the rise of the coronavirus pandemic – which hindered a lot of services such as routine immunisation, drugs for TB patients among others, with spiralling obesity, diabetes and hypertension rates, compounds the challenge, highlights the immediate need for a multi-sectoral response.
Over the last two decades, most public health events have been climate-related, whether they were vector- or water-borne, transmitted from animals to humans, or the result of natural disasters. For example, diarrhoeal diseases with their prevalence at 18.8% combing out an estimated 150,000 deaths yearly amongst children under five.
Additionally, the CJID Development programme will be training 20 Abuja-based journalists on Health and Environmental reporting on April 20 and 21, 2022. The link to apply for the training can be found here.
