Impacts Of Climate Change On Human Health

• The health status of millions of people is projected to be affected through, for example, increases in malnutrition; increased deaths, diseases and injury due to extreme weather events; increased burden of diarrhoeal diseases; increased frequency of cardio-respiratory diseases due to higher concentrations of ground-level ozone in urban areas related to climate change

• Increase in global temperatures will significantly increase the occurrence and severity of smog events in urban areas

• This will significantly reduce air quality

• Babies and the elderly will be most affected by a decrease in air quality

• Change in climatic and weather patterns will affect the distribution of infectious diseases

• Many viruses have restricted areas of occurrence due to natural physical barriers which are governed by temperature gradients

• Diseases such as Malaria and Dengue will move north as temperature rises

• The number of occurrence of infectious diseases will significantly increase.

• A rise in the case of people infected by such diseases has already begun to occur in some areas which were not of concern a few decades ago

• As indicated on the graph, the number of case of reported Dengue is sharply increasing worldwide. Many scientist believe this is a direct consequence of rising temperatures.

Source of Information : Climate Change: A Silent Threat by Sylvain Richer de Forges

Impacts Of Climate Change On Human Health