Understanding our health today calls for appreciating the interaction of human activities with our physical environment, meaning there is a thin connection between health, environment (pollution, deforestation, climate change and globalisation. In fact, human actions of pollution, deforestation and globalisation have become a serious threat to our health and our wellbeing.

Today the most common illnesses affecting child mortality (malaria, diarrhea respiratory infections and malnutrition) are caused by the lack of a clean environment, clean water, clean air, enough uncontaminated nutritious food and human actions.

Relatedly, the high prevalence of non-communicable and chronic diseases among middle aged population (cancer, heart diseases, mental health) are also related to the environment.

Safeguarding environmental damage, a prerequisite to good health and well-being

Preventing, limiting and managing environmental damage is the best option of protecting individuals and the population against advance consequences/negative impacts of environment vulnerability.

Today government and developmental institutions/agencies have realised the interconnectedness of a clean environment to good health and therefore are devising mitigation measures to reducing and reversing its impact.

I have seen institutions through their workforce engage in clean days or tree planting. This is meant to show that everything we do at the end has a link with our health. When we plant trees, we have clean fresh air free of diseases, we receive interrupted rainfall which enables us plant our crops, our food on time. And when we have enough, nutritious food, there is a likelihood, we will not have malnutrition, we will have less people falling sick and thus a healthy population.

A healthy population at peace with its environment is a healthy population.

Let us strive maintain a healthy environment for an enhanced quality of life, by creating safer conditions around our homes and our work places.

Let the population access the needed health care services by removing barriers and disparities of inadequate infrastructure, unavailable essential medicine and supplies and the unmotivated health work force that impede the poor from accessing quality health service.