The Aral Sea environmental health crisis.

destruction of the sea and its ecosystems constitutes one of the greatest man-made environmental disasters in history. The ecological catastrophe has been associated with a sharp decline in the health status of the human population in the region. The environmental deterioration is expected to continue and the health outlook is similarly grim. There is a requirement for immediate health related assistance from the international community. Background Central Asia is landscaped by desert, semi-desert, dry steppes and high mountains. The Aral Sea is sandwiched between two deserts, the Karakum and the Kyzylkum. In the Aral Sea region, summer temperatures reach 40 0 C and winter temperatures fall to –20 0 C. Precipitation is minimal. The main volume of water comes from high glaciers feeding into the two main rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, which enter the sea from the north and south respectively. Historically, the Amu Darya supplied about 70% of the Aral Sea’s water. In ancient times the Aral Sea region was an oasis, where thousands of people prospered as fishermen, farmers, merchants, hunters and craftsmen. It was once an important area that connected Europe and Asia as part of the Great Silk Road. Irrigation farming was being undertaken thousands of years ago (Glantz 1999). There were over 1100 islands in the Aral Sea, with countless lagoons and shallow straits. Aral is the Kazak word for island. The vast river deltas played a vital role in fish breeding. A flourishing fishing industry exploited over twenty commercially valuable species. A busy shipping trade connected the northern port of Aralsk to the river ports of the Amu Darya, some as far distant as Tajikstan (Okda 2001). The Aral Sea is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south. The Aral Sea Basin includes Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, and parts of Kazakstan, Kyrgystan, and Turkmenistan. Around the southern edge of the Aral Sea is the Karakalpakstan Republic, an autonomous republic incorporated into Uzbekistan. The people of Karakalpakstan, population approximately 1.5 million, are culturally and ethnically distinct from the rest of Uzbekistan and have borne much of the brunt of the ecological disaster.

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