More governments tackle violence as a public health threat – UN agency

Governments around the world are increasingly working to prevent violence in the interests of public health and cost-effectiveness, according to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO), which today opened a conference in San Francisco, California, aimed at seeking further advances on the issue.

“A few years ago you could have counted on one hand the number of countries able to spell out the links between violence, public health, and prevention,” WHO Assistant Director-General for Non-Communicable Diseases and Mental Health, Catherine Le Galès-Camus said.

“Today more than 70 countries have national violence prevention focal points and more than 50 have initiated policies and programmes focused on addressing the root causes of violence,” she added.

At the global violence prevention conference in San Francisco, which is jointly sponsored by WHO and the California Wellness Foundation, experts will be assessing advances in the field of violence prevention.

Examples of efforts to address the problem include Jamaica, where violence is the leading cause of death among young males, and the fifth leading cause of death among people, costing the country more than $700 million a year. In response, the Ministry of Health launched the Violence Prevention Alliance, a network of national and international agencies which share a public health approach to violence, WHO said.

A UN World report on violence and health issued in 2002 said that suicide and homicide were the 5th and 6th leading causes of death in people aged 15 to 29 years in age, and more than 90 per cent of those were concentrated in low- and middle-income countries. That report was pivotal in changing the notion that violence is not just a phenomenon, it can also be prevented, and has led many countries to adopt violence prevention programmes, said WHO.

“For many countries, accepting the notion that violence can be prevented has been nothing short of revolutionary,” said WHO’s Director of the Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention, Etienne Krug, adding: “This in fact may be the most important of all milestones achieved to date.”

The tools to address the problem include parent training, home visitation services, reducing alcohol availability and access to firearms, helping high-risk adolescents to complete schooling, changing cultural norms that condone violence, and providing adequate emergency care, WHO said.