Lusaka (AFP)

Children living in Kabwe town, central Zambia, are still exposed to high levels of lead twenty-five years after the end of mining in the region, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

According to a report by the human rights NGO, the city of Copperbelt region still has extreme levels of lead contamination and children continue to be exposed to high levels of toxic levels in the soil and soil. dust around their homes, schools and playgrounds.

"The Zambian government is aware that Kabwe has been seriously contaminated for decades, this has been the case since the 1990s, and the clean-up efforts have been inadequate," Joanna Naples-Mitchell, head of children's rights, told AFP. at HRW and author of the report.

"This is a public health emergency and the government is not reacting to the sense of urgency, it is a crisis," she said.

According to the report, although lead and zinc mines have been closed since 1994 in the city, various medical studies conducted over the last seven years show that lead levels in children's blood are still high.

Between 2003 and 2011, the World Bank financed a government project to clean up affected townships in Kabwe and test and care for children, but some 76,000 people, one-third of the city's population, still live in remote areas. contaminated.

A study published last year quoted by HRW estimates that more than 95 percent of children in the townships surrounding the lead mine have high levels of lead in the blood and that about half require medical intervention, said Ms. Naples. -Mitchell.

Kabwe, about 150 kilometers north of Lusaka, is one of the most polluted places in the world by decades of mining, with serious health consequences.

Three years ago, the government launched another five-year project funded by the World Bank to clean up lead-contaminated neighborhoods and conduct new tests and treatments.

HRW urges the government to change its approach because "past models have not worked". "The study that was conducted in 2018 shows that lead levels were the same as in the 1970s," noted Ms. Naples-Mitchell.

In a letter to HRW last month, the government said it did not have enough resources to deal with the scale of the contamination.

© 2019 AFP