Environmental health is a key responsibility for the City of Cape Town’s Health Directorate, despite functioning largely out of the public eye. The city celebrated World Environmental Health Day last week under the theme “Addressing Environmental Health Inequalities”.

“The International Federation of Environmental Health makes the point that there is a correlation between economic power and environmental health – Cape Town is not exempt in this regard, which is why stringent environmental health protocols and services are paramount, particularly in communities where such economic power does not exist,” explains the city’s Mayoral Committee Member for Health Councillor Benedicta van Minnen.

“In line with the theme, our environmental health practitioners in our eight sub-districts will focus on empowering communities in developing areas through education and awareness outreach programmes in informal settlements, at early childhood development centres, schools, informal businesses and taxi ranks,” said Van Minnen.

 

Recent efforts

City Health is currently conducting a feasibility study on the introduction of a mobile abattoir to assist informal meat traders in Nyanga with slaughtering and safe disposal of waste. This is one of the ways in which the city is working to ensure safer environments for communities.

In other areas over the last year, environmental health practitioners have:

• served 2 377 notices for non-compliance with legislation
• conducted nearly 20 000 visits to 378 informal settlements to monitor and take action in terms of water, sanitation and illegal dumping
• hosted 917 health and hygiene projects in informal settlements and 559 awareness drives at schools
• taken 2 958 routine samples of the domestic water supply, of which 99% complied with SANS 241 quality standards
• set up 83 247 block baiting stations for rodent control
• inspected 9 382 premises in terms of the Tobacco Products Control Amendment Act – 98% were compliant
• conducted quarterly inspections of 73 registered funeral undertakers across the metropole.

 

Resources a challenge

“In spite of the strides made in ensuring the health and well-being of Cape Town’s residents, resources continues to be a very real challenge and our Environmental Health Practitioners are not able to proactively get to every corner of the city,” the city said in a statement.

“We rely heavily on the public to alert us to potential problems. In the last year, we investigated just short of 10 000 complaints from residents and we would encourage them to keep engaging with us, in the interests of better health and a better quality of life for all.”

Members of the public can visit their nearest environmental health office or contact the city’s call centre on 0860 103 089.