Beginning Monday, international health experts will gather through Wednesday in Busan, South Korea, to discuss the effects of the environment on children’s health for the Third WHO International Conference on Children’s Health and the Environment, the Korea Times reports.

More than 600 child health experts and government officials representing 60 countries will discuss such topics as: “indoor and outdoor air pollution; water purity; sanitation and hygiene; chemical hazards; disease vectors; and global environmental change,” the newspaper writes. “Children are most often the first to suffer the consequences of environmental emergencies and natural disasters,” Park Mi-ja, a environment ministry official, said.

“According to the Ministry of Environment, more than three million children under five years old, mostly in developing or under developed countries die of diseases linked to adverse environmental conditions,” the Korea Times writes (Ji-sook, 6/7).