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pubmed:otherAbstract |
PIP: The United Nations Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in September, 1994, will evoke criticism of the inability of governments to act quickly enough to avert demographic and environmental crises. Rapid population growth has clear implications for public health. Globally there now occur anthropogenic changes in atmospheric composition, the degradation of fertile lands and ocean fisheries, an accelerating loss of biodiversity, and the social and ecological problems of massive urbanization. In the future, per capita consumption levels will increase in burgeoning populations of developing countries, thus adding to the environmental impacts of overconsuming rich countries. By the end of the decade there will be over six billion people, of whom one half will live in cities. These demographic and environmental trends, if translated into climatic change, regional food shortages, and weakened ecosystems, would adversely affect human health. The World Health Organization is likely to concentrate only on accessible family planning and promotion of health for women and families. Continuing asymmetric child-saving aid, unaccompanied by substantial aid to help mobilize the social and economic resources needed to reduce fertility, may delay the demographic transition in poor countries and potentiate future public health disasters. As a result of recent reductions in fertility, even in Sub-Saharan Africa, average family sizes have been halved. Yet the demographic momentum will double population by 2050. The biosphere is a complex of ecosystems and, if unsustained, it could not fulfill the productive, cleansing, and protective functions on which life depends. The Cairo conference must therefore recognize that sustaining human health is a prime reason for concern about population growth and models of economic development.
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