Health

The Healthy Cities Report aims to provide policymakers and development practitioners with an action-oriented framework for achieving healthy cities. Informed by an extensive literature review, it draws on the wealth of World Bank experience in urban development, citing examples and case studies of healthy city successes and challenges globally. It also recognizes the significant existing global efforts made by other stakeholders and partners on the healthy cities agenda, incorporating these lessons and practices.

Biodiversity underpins urban ecosystem functions that are essential for human health and well-being. Understanding how biodiversity relates to human health is a developing frontier for science, policy and practice. This article describes the beneficial, as well as harmful, aspects of biodiversity to human health in urban environments. Recent research shows that contact with biodiversity of natural environments within towns and cities can be both positive and negative to human physical, mental and social health and well-being.

This 2021 Report Card on Ecosystem Health provides an in-depth look at the region’s efforts in moving toward a more resilient environment and community for people and native wildlife. A healthy and improved ecosystem requires protecting and restoring high-quality habitats and native biodiversity; reducing ecosystem threats like wildfire and invasive species; and ensuring every Angeleno has access to nature and its benefits such as clean water, shade, and respite through policy solutions that address the region’s inequities.

Health care waste management (HCWM) is a process to help ensure proper hospital hygiene and safety of health care workers and communities. It includes planning and procurement, construction, staff training and behavior, proper use of tools, machines and pharmaceuticals, proper disposal methods inside and outside the hospital, and evaluation. Its many dimensions require a broader focus than the traditional health specialist or engineering point of view. The need for proper HCWM has been gaining recognition slowly.

The Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Guidelines are technical reference documents with general and industryspecific examples of Good International Industry Practice (GIIP)1. When one or more members of the World Bank Group are involved in a project, these EHS Guidelines are applied as required by their respective policies and standards. These industry sector EHS guidelines are designed to be used together with the General EHS Guidelines document, which provides guidance to users on common EHS issues potentially applicable to all industry sectors.

The global sanitation workforce bridges the gap between sanitation infrastructure and the provision of sanitation services. Sanitation workers provide an essential public service but often at the cost of their dignity, safety, health, and living conditions. They are some of the most vulnerable workers. They are far too often invisible, unquantified, and ostracized, and many of the challenges they face stem from this fundamental lack of acknowledgment.

Maintaining the delivery of basic urban service—including waste collection and management—is becoming a growing challenge to cities grappling with the fallout from COVID-19. Every year the world generates over 2 billion metric tons of municipal solid waste. The World Bank estimates that by 2050 annual waste generation will increase by 70 percent—to 3.4 billion metric tons. In low-income countries, the volume of  waste is expected to triple by 2050, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.