Preparing situation reports for national environmental health action plans

While it may be desirable to base a situation report on detailed knowledge, with statistical backing if appropriate, it may be adequate to describe the situation in terms of an expert view. Some countries have already undertaken assessments or situation reports of some environmental health areas. In such cases, a simple cross-reference may be adequate, possibly supplemented by some updating. For example, one country has omitted occupational health from its NEHAP because it had recently published a report on it.

Sometimes lack of data may preclude quantification of a problem within a situation report even though it is self evidently severe. Latvia, for example, found a way around this difficulty: experts covering all the relevant disciplines were asked to come to a consensus on the choice of problems to be tackled in the first stage of the NEHAP. This pragmatic approach worked well. Another possibility is a system of weightings for relevant factors although such a system is likely to pose as many difficulties in its devising as it solves in its application.

The situation report for a NEHAP should also assess the institutional and legal framework of a country regarding its adequacy for implementing actions. Action to put right inadequacies in the framework is as much part of an action programme as engineering projects or research, and requires a situation assessment as much as other environmental factors.