| Acting on an Environmental Health Disaster: The Case of the Aral Sea Ian Small,1,2 J. van der Meer,3 and R.E.G. Upshur2,4 1Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan and the Aral Sea Area Program, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Tashkent, Uzbekistan; 2Institute of Environment and Health, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; 3Medecins Sans Frontieres, Kiev, Ukraine; 4Primary Care Research Unit, Departments of Family and Community Medicine and Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Abstract
The Aral Sea area in Central Asia has been encountering one of the world's greatest environmental disasters for more than 15 years. During that time, despite many assessments and millions of dollars spent by large, multinational organizations, little has changed. The 5 million people living in this neglected and virtually unknown part of the world are suffering not only from an environmental catastrophe that has no easy solutions but also from a litany of health problems. The region is often dismissed as a chronic problem where nothing positive can be achieved. Within this complicated context, Medecins Sans Frontieres, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, is actively trying to assess the impact of the environmental disaster on human health to help the people who live in the Aral Sea area cope with their environment. Medecins Sans Frontieres has combined a direct medical program to improve the health of the population while conducting operational research to gain a better understanding of the relationship between the environmental disaster and human health outcomes. In this paper we explore the health situation of the region and the broader policy context in which it is situated, and present some ideas that could potentially be applied to many other places in the world that are caught up in environmental and human health disasters. Key words: Aral Sea, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Uzbekistan. Environ Health Perspect 109:547-549 (2001) . [Online 18 May 2001] http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2001/109p547-549small/ abstract.html Address correspondence to I. Small, Uzbekistan/ Turkmenistan and the Aral Sea Program, Medecins Sans Frontieres, UI. Konstitutsiya, House 4, PO Box 333, 700 000 Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Telephone: +998 (71) 1524031. Fax: +998 (71) 1207072. E-mail: msfh-tashkent@amsterdam.msf.org Received 5 May 2000 ; accepted 18 December 2000.
The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |
