Reaching the sustainable development goals through healthy environments: are we on track?

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015 opened new opportunities to work towards healthy environments through 'whole of government' and 'whole of society' approaches. It created a strong policy platform that acknowledges health as a result and an enabler of sustainable policies across all sectors of government. Five years into the process, an initial analysis of emerging trends indicates that, despite some encouraging developments in policy as well as overall progress in economy and technology, there remains a gap between rhetoric, ambition and reality. In particular, the monitoring system for environment and health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs) and targets requires further development; inequalities in environment and health persist and in some areas have increased; equity is not yet a central element of implementation and reporting on the achievement of the SDGs; and, most worrying of all, trends in key environmental indicators that are vital to the survival of the human species, such as those related to climate change and biodiversity, are still on an overall negative path. In summary, governments must significantly and rapidly increase action to secure the habitability and safety of planet Earth. The public health community assumes an unprecedented role in placing and maintaining health and equity at the heart of the political agenda. This demands new governance models conferring on the health sector a clear mandate and legitimacy to operate across sectors. It also requires enhancing capacities among health professionals to embrace this new level of complexity, understand the multiple links between sectoral policies and health, and successfully engage with other government sectors and stakeholders.

[Detection of viruses in raw water as a basic tool for risk assessment]. / Nachweis von Viren im Rohwasser als Grundlage einer Risikoabschätzung.

Human pathogenic viruses may end up in surface waters by fecal contamination. However, the German drinking water ordinance requests that pathogens in drinking water should not be present in concentrations constituting a potential danger to human health. Since many viruses do have a very low dose of infection, they have to be sufficiently eliminated in the process of drinking water purification. Waterborne virus outbreaks in Europe, over the last few decades, were mostly linked to noncompliance with the generally accepted codes of practice for drinking water production. The aimed level of protection of drinking water supplies in Germany, however, exceeds prevention of outbreaks by even protecting against sporadic virus infections. Documentation of such a high level of protection is not achieved by end product control alone but requires a process analysis with risk assessment. To do such an analysis, information regarding the presence of viruses in the raw water used for drinking water production, as well as data of virus elimination rates during purification processes, are of major importance. This paper presents suggestions for implementation of such a risk assessment, focusing on the evaluation of raw water quality.