Climate Change: Adverse Health Impacts and Roles of Health Professionals

Correspondence to Atanu Sarkar, MD, PhD, Division of Community Health and Humanities, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, A1B 3V6 E-mail: atanu.sarkar@ med.mun.ca The fourth assessment report (2007) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed the strong evidence of climate change, which represents one of the defining challenges of the 21 century. The anthropogenic accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are responsible for these changes. In 2008, at the World Health Assembly, the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged the global community to engage more actively responding to climate change and the impending health risk, particularly in vulnerable geographic regions and in poorly resourced populations. The world’s poor are likely to be the most vulnerable to predicted climate changes due to; 1) absence of wellfunctioning socio-political and economic infrastructures and good governance that would facilitate adaptation to climate perturbations; and 2) inherent low capacity of the poor to adapt to changes in the biological and physical systems on which they depend for their basic livelihoods. Risks of health on account of climate change, arise by complex direct and indirect pathways. The risks usually reflect changes in both average climate conditions and climate variability as well. The main risks are: Temperature-related morbidity and mortality: The adverse health effects of rising temperature get worsen in situations where extreme heat is sustained over a longer period, as in heat waves. Usually people cannot acclimatize rapidly to extreme heat, particularly when it occurs early in the season. The effects of heat waves are greater when there is associated high humidity and less night-time cooling. People living in temperate climates are more vulnerable for lack of adaptation capacity. Urban sprawls get hotter than suburban and rural areas, due to concrete, asphalt and high density of roofs, which retain heat and eventually creating the heat island effect. The very young, elderly people, those in ill health, and poor people are most likely to be affected by this effect. Extreme events: There are reports of more extreme weather events such as storms, hurricanes, flooding, ice-storm and damaging public health infrastructure including contamination of food and water, injuries and illnesses. Sea temperature rise has led to rise of water vapor levels resulting in increase in peak windspeed, rainfall and high intensity of hurricanes/tropical cyclones. Between 1992 and 2001, floods affected more than 1.2 billion people worldwide and caused almost 100 000 deaths. When Hurricane Katrina struck the southern US coast in 2005, it caused more than 1300 deaths— almost 45% of the victims were over 75 years old. Rising spell of dry temperature often results in forest fires, as we have witnessed in western US and Canada, Australia, Spain and Russia. The extreme events cause loss of crops and grazing land, destroy shrubs and plants (used as fodder for livestock), reduce the quantity and quality of water resources, as well as fish species; lead to displacement of population Editorial