Climate and health.

Byline: Arif Azad

THE COP25 conference in Madrid last month ended without much progress in terms of coming up with either additional finances for countries battling severe effects of climate change, or an alternative carbon market. The countries present expressed only ritualistic commitment to continue working towards the goals of greenhouse gases reduction set in the previous edition of the Paris climate conference.

However, the WHO used the occasion to unveil its first-ever report on the resilience of health systems vis-a-vis climate change, The WHO Health and Climate Change Survey: Tracking Global Progress, to highlight the neglected link between health and climate change. Rising global temperature impacts social and environmental determinants of health, including clean air, potable water, sufficient food and secure shelter, increasing the global disease burden.

Increased temperatures contribute to higher levels of pollens and allergens in the atmosphere that cause respiratory diseases like asthma while the ozone layer's depletion contributes to higher prevalence of skin cancers. Hot weather causes dehydration; in areas where water is scarce, kidney stones and other health complications may arise.

Increased frequency of extreme weather events also contributes to the disease burden. For example, between 2010 and 2015, Pakistan was ravaged by severe flooding that caused deaths in the thousands, while also contaminating freshwater sources, increasing the prevalence of water-borne diseases and creating breeding grounds for disease-carrying insects, besides damaging public property.

Inaction on climate change will only exacerbate the problem.

Meanwhile, carbon emissions into the atmosphere also lower the nutritional density of food crops. Climate change induces drought leading to disruption of the supply and production of food items, eventually resulting in food insecurity and malnutrition.

With malnutrition levels already alarmingly high in Pakistan, the government's inaction on climate change will only exacerbate the problem. According to the WHO, the effects of climate change can cause up to 250,000 additional deaths between 2030 and 2050 by a combination of malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoeal diseases and heat stress, costing the global health sector up to $4 billion by 2030.

WHO also estimates that reducing carbon emissions in line with the 2014 Paris Agreement could save about a million lives by 2050 through action on reducing air...

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