World Health Organization – April 2008

Available online as PDF file [34p.] at: http://www.who.int/world-health-day/toolkit/report_web.pdf

“………..There is now widespread agreement that the earth is warming, due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activity. It is also clear that current trends in energy use development and population growth will lead to continuing – and more severe – climate change.

The changing climate will inevitably affect the basic requirements for maintaining health: clean air and water, sufficient food and adequate shelter. Each year, about 800 000 people die from causes attributable to urban air pollution, 1.8 million from diarrhoea largely resulting from lack of access to clean water supply and sanitation, and from poor hygiene, 3.5 million from malnutrition and approximately 60 000 in natural disasters.

A warmer and more variable climate threatens to lead to higher levels of some air pollutants, increase transmission of diseases through unclean water and through contaminated food, to compromise agricultural production in some of the least developed countries, and to increase the hazards of extreme weather.

Climate change also brings new challenges to the control of infectious diseases. Many of the major killers are highly climate sensitive as regards temperature and rainfall, including cholera and the diarrhoeal diseases, as well as diseases including malaria, dengue and other infections carried by vectors. In sum, climate change threatens to slow, halt or reverse the progress that the global public health community is now making against many of these diseases.

In the long run, however, the greatest health impacts may not be from acute shocks such as natural disasters or epidemics, but from the gradual build-up of pressure on the natural, economic and social systems that sustain health, and which are already under stress in much of the developing world. These gradual stresses include reductions and seasonal changes in the availability of fresh water, regional drops in food production, and rising sea levels. Each of these changes has the potential to force population displacement and increase the risks of civil conflict.

All populations are vulnerable – but some are more vulnerable than others

All populations will be affected by a changing climate, but the initial health risks vary greatly, depending on where and how people live. People living in small island developing states and other coastal regions, megacities, and mountainous and polar regions are all particularly vulnerable in different ways.

Health effects are expected to be more severe for elderly people and people with infirmities or pre-existing medical conditions. The groups who are likely to bear most of the resulting disease burden are children and the poor, especially women. The major diseases that are most sensitive to climate change – diarrhoea, vector-borne diseases like malaria, and infections associated with undernutrition – are most serious in children living in poverty……… ‘

Content:

Statement by the Director-General of the World Health Organization

Summary

WHAT ARE THE RISKS?

1. Climate change: past and future

2. Climate and it’s impact on the fundamentals of health

3. “Natural” disasters: the growing influence of climate change on heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms

4. Changing patterns of infection

5. Long-term stresses: water shortages, malnutrition, displacement and conflict

WHO IS AT RISK?

6. Vulnerable regions: exposed

7. Children: life-long exposure to health risks from climate change

8. The most vulnerable: they support the greatest health burdens

9. All of us: our shared health security

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

10. Putting health at the heart of the climate change agenda

11. Strengthening public health systems

References

Website: http://www.who.int/world-health-day/en/index.html