[A concept of promoting health in the population of the circumpolar regions].

The preservation of human health in polar and circumpolar regions depends mainly on the strategy for future development of these regions. The consequences of human intervention into northern ecology are irreversible, as in the case of greenhouse effect, industrial and atomic pollutions of polar nature, tundra devastation, destruction of northern flora and fauna, etc. The ongoing creation of large-scale industrial population centers in the North due to newcomers is to be stopped. Polar regions are to be used for biospheric reservation and tourist sanitary zones, to preserve specific flora and fauna, to provide the rhythms and customs necessary to survive in extreme climatic and geophysical conditions of high latitudes. The programme for securing man's survival in circumpolar regions should comprise several stages of practical measures to provide necessary resources and to combine international efforts. The preservation of human health should be based on the understanding of the relationship between the health status and biospheric processes and the assessment of the role of human intervention into polar ecology. A programme facilitating the preservation of human health and survival in the North and in the Antarctic should be launched.