26 September 2021 – The WHO Regional Centre for Environmental Health ACrion (CEHA), in collaboration with the WHO country office in Egypt and the Ministry of Health and Population, organized a national training workshop to assess the health impacts of air pollution in Egypt on 6–9 September 2021. The objectives of the workshop were framed around with the "Regional Framework for addressing air pollution and health in the Eastern Mediterranean Region 2017–2022".
The main purposes of the workshop were to provide a forum for national health, environment, and statistics professionals to exchange knowledge, and to estimate the health impacts of air pollution, mainly for fine particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5), with real national and local data using the WHO tool (AirQ+ ver 2.1 Software).
Thirty-five national experts from different sectors, including the Ministry of Health and Population, Ministry of Environment, Egyptian Environment Affairs Agency, National Research Centre, Ministry of Defense, Egyptian Army, Environmental Monitoring and Occupational Health Centre, and other related sectors, attended the training.
The 4-day workshop succeeded in achieving its objectives:
provide evidence on linkages between air pollution and health outcomes;
explain basics of health impact assessment of air pollution;
review availability of data needed for health impacts assessment of air pollution in Egypt;
and training on the WHO AirQ+ software.
AirQ+ software can estimate the effects of short-term changes in air pollution (based on risk estimates from time-series studies), and the effects of long-term exposures (using life-tables approach and based on risk estimates from cohort studies).
The workshop highlighted the need of synchronizing the efforts of all sectors involved in monitoring and reporting air quality in Egypt, through establishing a joint committee to improve and guide the work of a national air quality monitoring including all monitoring stations.
Related links
AirQ+: software tool for health risk assessment of air pollution
For more information, please contact:
