Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Health impact of climate change

A recent report highlights the impact on global health of climate change.

The old "Malaria" spreading story needs to be looked at very carefully given that it is a treatable disease. More interesting is the link between poverty and climate instability.

Climate Change to Hit Health Above Economy - Study [PlanetArk]

But McMichael said climate shift would bring changes to the pattern of infectious diseases, the effect of worsening food yields and loss of people's livelihoods. While it was unlikely to spawn entirely new types of diseases, it would impact on the frequency, range and season patterns of many existing disorders, with between 20 and 70 million more people living in malarial regions by 2080, he said.

And the impact would be hardest in poor countries, said the researchers, including co-author Sharon Friel from the Australian National University, Tony Nyong from Nigeria's Jos University and Carlos Corvalan of the World Health Organization.

"Infectious diseases cannot be stabilised in circumstances of climatic instability, refugee flows and impoverishment," McMichael said. "Poverty cannot be eliminated while environmental degradation exacerbates malnutrition, disease and injury."


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are right, climate change affects everything and everyone. Ofcourse, that we have to take measures so that we can face those problems in the future. First of all, we have to understand climate, how we influence it and which are the most important variables. If we understand climate we could predict de spreading of different desease and act on the matter. There are some interesting ideas about what is climate: www.whatisclimate.com