Improving health conditions in slums

Improving hygiene conditions in shanty towns

Description

Improving health conditions in slums involves implementing targeted interventions to address inadequate sanitation, unsafe water, overcrowding, and limited healthcare access. Essential actions include upgrading basic infrastructure, promoting hygiene education, ensuring regular waste collection, and providing affordable primary healthcare services. These measures aim to reduce the spread of communicable diseases, lower child mortality, and enhance overall well-being, directly remedying the environmental and social determinants that perpetuate poor health in slum communities.

Implementation

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities.

Agenda 21 recommends the development of programmes for improving health conditions in human settlements, in particular within slums and non-tenured settlements, on the basis of health risk assessment.