Reuters AlertNet Lite - GLOBAL: Climate change biggest threat to health, new study

Reuters AlertNet Full site

NEWSDESK

GLOBAL: Climate change biggest threat to health, new study

14 May 2009 02:17:13 GMT
Source: IRIN

Background

• Climate change

• Children

JOHANNESBURG, 14 May 2009 (IRIN) - Climate change will be the biggest global health threat in the 21st century, but little is known about its possible effects on developing countries, where the impact will be felt most, says a new report.

"Information that is reliable, accurate, and disseminated is fundamental for effective adaptation and to avoid the so-called adaptation apartheid," said the report by a commission set up by the British medical journal, The Lancet, and the University College London (UCL) Institute for Global Health, in a cooperative advocacy effort to highlight the threat of global warming to health.

The authors called for a collation of global expertise on the health effects of climate change at a major conference within the next two years to define the priorities for management, implementation, and monitoring. "We are standing at the tip of a problem - it is just like where we were with HIV 25 years ago," said Anthony Costello, the main author of the report.

Besides rising temperatures and a higher frequency of natural disasters like droughts and floods, the impact of other climate changes on food and water security would also affect health, he said.

In the report, Managing the health effects of climate change, the team of researchers focused on six key areas: patterns of disease and mortality; food security; water and sanitation; shelter and human settlements; extreme events; and population migration.

Modest global warming since the 1970s was already causing over 150,000 excess deaths every year by 2000, according to a study by the World Health Organisation. This assessment was based on studies on the impact of climate-sensitive illnesses like diarrhoeal disease, which is the second leading infectious cause of childhood mortality, and accounts for a total of around 1.8 million deaths each year.

Countries, mostly in the developing world, could be spending from US$6 million to $18 billion a year by 2030 to manage additional costs to health services as a result of climate change, a study based on the WHO assessment noted.

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, an international scientific body, said rising temperatures and the frequency of extreme events could exacerbate climate-sensitive illnesses like malaria, cholera, Rift Valley fever and dengue fever, adversely affecting human health in developing countries.

Geographic location and thinner financial and human resources also play a role: 70 percent of natural disasters between 2004 and 2006 occurred in Asia, the Pacific region, Africa and the Middle East, where most of the world's vulnerable and exposed populations live.

Costello, who heads the Centre for International Health and Development at UCL, said hardly any projections of the impact of climate change in developing countries, particularly in Africa, had been made, which was of great concern.

He told IRIN that while data on the impact of heat waves in the USA and Europe existed, almost no reliable data for heat waves - a "silent killer" - were available for Africa or south Asia.

"You can already see the impact unfolding in countries like Bangladesh, where this year temperatures have soared at least four degrees Celsius above the average temperatures recorded for this time of the year," said Costello.

The report also noted the "massive inequality in health systems", and pointed out that "the loss of healthy life-years as a result of global environmental change is predicted to be 500 times higher in Africa than in European nations, despite Africa making a minimal contribution to the causes of climate change."

Costello said the report highlighted the need for vulnerable countries to conduct regional and local assessments of the possible impact of climate change on health, and that the international community needed to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which would lower the risk of extreme events and indirectly improve health.

"The big message of this report is that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people," he said. "[It's] not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation."

jk/he

Email this article Send comments

Topics

• Children

• Climate change

MORE >>

NGO latest

• Concerns grow for vast numbers of children fleeing Pakistan fighting
Plan Asia Regional Office (ARO)

• Sri Lanka: third ICRC staff member killed in conflict area
ICRC - Switzerland

• CARE International calls for immediate assistance for women and girls who fled the violence
CARE International - UK

• CARE calls for immediate assistance for women and girls who fled the Pakistan violence
CARE International - UK

• Sri Lanka: fighting hinders further ICRC evacuations of severely wounded people
Red Cross - Ireland

MORE >>

Latest news

• GLOBAL: Climate change biggest threat to health, new study

• Republicans push for changes to U.S. climate bill

• Antivenin saves children from scorpion's sting

• Republicans push changes to U.S. climate bill

• A catastrophe for Sri Lanka's children trapped in northern conflict zone

MORE >>

IRIN news

Background information

Topics

Children

Climate change

Facts & figures

Bangladesh

Breaking stories

GLOBAL: Climate change biggest threat to health, new study (1 minute ago)

Republicans push for changes to U.S. climate bill (1 minute ago)

AlertNet insight

Thousands of Bangladeshi families still without homes after Cyclone Sidr (1 minute ago)

Aid agency news feed

Concerns grow for vast numbers of children fleeing Pakistan fighting (1 minute ago)

Blogs

Women and children struggle alone in Pakistan camps (1 minute ago)

Maps

Tropical storm Bijli (1 minute ago)

Del.icio.us | Digg

Digg |

NewsVine | Reddit

Latest images

Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-05-13T173205Z_01_PW12_RTRIDSP_2_BRAZIL_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/PW12.htm

Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-05-13T164541Z_01_ISL03_RTRIDSP_2_PAKISTAN-VIOLENCE_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/ISL03.htm

Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-05-13T134848Z_01_AAL114_RTRIDSP_2_PAKISTAN-VIOLENCE_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/AAL114.htm

Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-05-13T102826Z_01_JAK07_RTRIDSP_2_INDONESIA-CORAL-REEFS_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/JAK07.htm

Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-05-13T102716Z_01_JAK06_RTRIDSP_2_INDONESIA-CORAL-REEFS_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/JAK06.htm

Children wave on their boat in a street flooded by Mearim river in Bacabal, in the northeastern state of Maranhao May 13, 2009. Floods and mudslides from months of heavy rains ...

More pictures | Galleries

Last updated:Thu May 14 02:17:58 2009

Background

Topics

NGO latest

Latest news

Background information

Related articles