(MENAFN- Asia Times) A few years ago, while doing research in the highlands of Ethiopia, a medical professional explained how cases of malaria were spreading each year up the mountains. Rising temperatures were allowing the parasite-carrying mosquitoes to survive at higher altitudes, and infect new communities.
It is a story repeated across the world as we witness the impact of the climate emergency on global health ever more directly.
At COP28, the annual United Nations conference on climate change, which is under way in Dubai this week, a full day has been allocated to a discussion on the global health challenges of the climate emergency.
While it might be the first time health has received such attention at a COP meeting, evidence for the impact of the climate emergency on health is clear and growing. The World Health Organization estimates that an annual 250,000 additional deaths will occur as a result of climate-change-induced undernutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat alone.
Climate change impacts on health in two main ways. First, the direct impact from heatwaves, storms, floods and other extreme weather events.
For example, the US city of
Phoenix saw a 50% increase
in heat-related deaths as a result of the summer heatwave that scorched large parts of the United States. As storms rage more intensely and frequently, as wildfires burn more often and across wider areas, as floods appear more suddenly, more people will be injured or killed as a result.
Second, climate change can exacerbate and spread existing diseases. Dengue fever, for example, was found in only nine countries in 1970. Now it is
present in more than 100 .
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