A Converging Crisis: Health and Climate Change

Author: May Thongthum

Figure 2: Change in climate suitability for infectious diseases. Solid lines represent the annual change. Dashed lines represent the trend since 1950 (for dengue and malaria) and 1982 (for Vibrio bacteria).

The Lancet Countdown is an international collaboration between experts in various fields established to provide a global monitoring system on the emerging health profile of the changing climate. The report presents 43 indicators in five sections; climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerabilities; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement (Lancet,2020). According to the report, indicators in all domains of “Climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerabilities” are worsening, the selected summaries of this section are as follows:

  • Exposure to heatwaves: vulnerable populations were exposed to an additional 475 million heatwave events globally in 2019 as reflected in excess morbidity and mortality. 
  • Increase in heat-related mortality: during the past 20 years, there has been a 53.7% increase in heat-related mortality in people older than 65 years.  
  • Damaged economic output: the high cost in terms of human lives and suffering is approximately 302 billion hours of potential labor capacity lost in 2019. 
  • Studies from 2015 to 2020 have shown the fingerprints of climate change in 76 floods, droughts, storms, and temperature anomalies.  
  • Exposure to high risk of wildfire: increase in the number of days of people being exposed to a very high risk of wildfire between 2001–04 and 2016–19 in 114 countries. 
  • Global food security: rising temperatures and increasingly frequent extreme events led to a decline of global major crop yields by 1.8–5.6% between 1981 and 2019. 
  • Climate suitability for infectious disease transmission has been growing rapidly since the 1950s with a 15.0% increase for dengue caused by Aedes albopictus in 2018, and regional increases for malaria and Vibrio bacteria. 
  • Flooding from rising sea levels: based on current populations, between 145 million people and 565 million people face potential inundation. 

References:

Figure retrieved from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32290-X/fulltext

Watts, N., Amann, M., Arnell, N., Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Beagley, J., Belesova, K., . . . Costello, A. (2020). The 2020 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: Responding to converging crises. The Lancet. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)32290-x 

 

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