Nova Scotia Leads the Way Implementing the Tenets of the Ottawa Charter For
Health Promotion

Ottawa's W.H.O. Charter Is a Blueprint For Action
That Aims at Achieving Health For All By 2000


Ottawa  - Canadian health experts developed the Ottawa Charter for Health
Promotion which embraced new paradigms in health promotion and asked people
in all walks of life, nongovernmental and voluntary organisations,
governments, the World Health Organisation and all other bodies concerned
to join forces in introducing new strategies for health promotion in order
to ensure that Health For All by the year 2000 will become a reality.
Industry and government policy makers from all signatory countries were
expected to adopt a new thinking about strategies that promote health.

"Nova Scotia's institutions appear to have moved toward a more
Socio-ecological approach to health by developing policies that recognise
the inextricable links between people and their environment", says Judith
Spence, RN, C.E.O. the Environmental Illness Society of Canada. "School
boards, municipal, provincial and other bodies in Nova Scotia spent years
consulting with community stakeholders before they developed a number of
scensible public policies".

The Ottawa Charter for health Promotion teaches that health is created and
lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they
learn, work and play and that it is ensured when the society one lives in
creates conditions that allow the attainment of health by all its members.

Resistance by special interest sectors like the perfume industry, was
predictable and foreseen by the architects of the Ottawa Charter for Health
Promotion: "decision makers must counteract the pressures towards harmful
products, resource depletion, unhealthy living conditions and environments,
and bad nutrition and, must focus attention on public health issues such as
pollution, occupational hazards, housing and settlements".

Nova Scotia's institutions have recognised  the increase of sensitivity to
fragrances and they took action. Through policy, they clearly demonstrate
that people are their main health resource. Their awareness raising
programs have supported Haligonians and have enabled them to keep
themselves, their families and friends healthy. They accepted the community
as the essential voice in matters of its health, living conditions and
well-being.

"This is exactly how health is promoted and it is how it can be achieved by
2000 for Nova Scotians with Environmental Illness", affirms Spence,
"decision makers there have recognised health and its maintenance as being
a major social investment and challenge and, its institutions have taken
action, just as the Charter Canada promoted that it should".  The EISC
maintains that these steps must be taken to promote health for the over 15%
of Nova Scotians who have asthma and/or Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.

Health promotion goes beyond health care. It puts health on the agenda of
policy makers in all sectors and at all levels, directing them to be aware
of the health consequences of their decisions and to accept their
responsibilities for health.

Health promotion policy requires the identification of obstacles to the
adoption of healthy public policies in non-health sectors, and ways of
removing them. The aim must be to make the healthier choice the easier
choice for policy makers as well.

The Environmental Illness Society of Canada commends the Mayor and his
staff, the Nova Scotia provincial Tourism Office and local schools boards
for adopting policies that made them the focal point of media ridicule but
which demonstrate that they place the health needs of their constituency
ahead of the wants of special interests. "This truly most of the formula
for achieving health.  This, in addition to access to making specialised
Environmental Medicine treatments available, will lead to "health for all
by 2000 and beyond".

For more information about the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion,
the First National Symposium on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia: Environmentally-Triggered and Emerging
Illnesses, November 17-19, 2000, visit http://www.eisc.ca or, contact
Judith Spence (613) 728-9493, eisc@eisc.ca and , Toll Free: 877-313-EISC