Climate change and adverse health impacts

Climate change and adverse health impacts

Subject: Environment

Context: In a first-of-its-kind effort, editors of more than 220 leading health journals from all over the world have published a joint editorial asking governments to take immediate and more ambitious climate action to hold global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5°C from pre-industrial times.

Concept:

• Climate change has several adverse health impacts, both direct and indirect.
• Heat-related diseases triggered by extreme heat events, which are on the rise because of changing climate, are an example of direct health impacts of climate change.
• Changing crop patterns, declining yields, water scarcity, and extreme precipitation are expected to have health consequences as well. Food shortages and resultant malnutrition are considered major side-effects of rising temperatures.
• The World Health Organization estimates that about 250,000 excess deaths are likely to be caused by climate change-induced factors malnutrition, malaria, diarrheas’, and heat stress between 2030 and 2050.
• Higher temperatures have led to increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality.
• It emphasis on the need to hold global rise in temperatures to 1.5°C not just 2°C. The recent IPCC report had mentioned that the 1.5°C target was likely to be reached in less than two decades.