Environmental Health
WHO supports the country's environmental health programme
In partnership with other international organizations, WHO supported environment health programmes in the country. Among these are:
- development of household water treatment and safe storage action plan; and piloting these plans in Region 1, 5 and 8 (with USAID support);
- introduction, capacity building and scale up of water safety plans (with AusAID support);
- development of Philippine National Standards for Drinking Water;
- development of Philippine Sanitation Roadmap (with USAID support);
- provision of technical assistance to sector assessment and monitoring (with USAID support);
- support to national sanitation summits, fora and celebration of International Year of Sanitation;
- support to specific studies on environmental health such as studies on air pollution, mining and burden of disease;
- technical assistance to health care waste project (with GEF support);
- development of sustainable sanitation education programme and support to fellowships and attendance to international meetings;
- development and updating of National Environmental Health Action Plan (with USAID support); and
- piloting tools and systems for health adaptation on climate change and support to DOH policy development on climate change and health (MDG-F);
Areas of cooperation for 2011-2016
WHO identified areas of cooperation with the Government from 2011 to 2016. These areas are:
- assessing policies, models, and guidelines for drinking water safety;
- scaling up the water safety plan implementation;
- providing policy options and packages for household water treatment system;
- scaling up strategy for water and sanitation sector assessment and monitoring;
- updating priority standards for environmental health;
- developing minimum activity packages for environmental and occupational health programme;
- assessing tne National Environmental Health Action Plan (NEHAP), implementing and documenting best practices;
- developing a national road map for health care waste management;
- developing tools for environmental health risk mapping;
- developing operational guidelines on occupational health for the informal sector;
- making strategies, packages and guidelines for integrating climate change to environmental and occupational health programmes;
- assessing the capacity and developing DOH key staff on climate change and environmental health planning;
- developing the research agenda on climate change and environmental health;and
- advocacy and networking for climate change and environmental health.