Health is inextricably linked to climate change. Indeed, climate change influences the social determinants of health: clean air, drinking water, sufficient food, housing security, development of cardiovascular illnessesor respiratory, and infectious (malaria, dengue fever).
The Organization estimates that climate change could lead to around 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050: 38,000 from heat exposure in the elderly, 48,000 from diarrhoea, 60,000 from malaria, and 95,000 due to child malnutrition.
“The cost of direct damage to health (excluding costs in health-determining sectors such as agriculture and water and sanitation) is between $2 billion and $4 billion per year of here 2030,” recalls the Organization.
Scientists on alert
In 2015, Professor Anthony Costello, Director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of London in the United Kingdom (UCL) declared in a study published in the medical journal The Lancet, “public health is one of the biggest challenges of global warming”. “Reaching 4°C warming would have catastrophic effects on human health. This is a situation that could call into question all the progress of the last half-century. We believe that the climate emergency is a medical emergency”.
A study published in the medical journal Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that the changes induce heat-related disorders, such as heat stress and a reduction in work capacity, but also an increase inasthma and respiratory diseases. Infectious and vector-borne diseases (pathologies transmitted by vectors such as mosquitoes, lice, ticks, flies) will develop like gastrointestinal diseases. These climatic changes will also be responsible for post-traumatic disorders and an increase in depression.
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