06 October 2009
Prepare for Health Effects of Climate Change, World Experts Urge
Better surveillance and forecasting, research into vulnerability needed
Washington ― Recognition of the link between climate change and health is growing, driving efforts of those who are the front-line responders ― public health professionals ― to make sure health care systems and global populations are prepared for the worst.
Scientists worldwide agree that climate is changing as a result of human activity, and climate influences the biological functions basic to life.
In April 2008, the theme for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Health Day was “Protecting Health from Climate Change.” In the United States, the theme of National Public Health Week was “Climate Change: Our Health in the Balance.” And a U.S. House of Representatives committee heard testimony from climate and health experts on the same topic. (See “World Health Day Targets Human Effects of Climate Change.”)
“The public health system will be a front-line responder to potential emergency conditions caused by climate change,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA), told the House Select Committee on Energy Dependence and Global Warming. “It will also play a key role in informing, educating and empowering the nation to make the changes needed to mitigate the problem.”
This year, in 2009, a range of studies, reports and institutions are delving even deeper into the costs and effects of climate change on public health. WHO released “Protecting Health from Climate Change,” a report that details global research priorities related to health and climate change, for example, and U.S. researchers published a study examining climate change and health costs of air emissions from biofuels and gasoline.
ENERGY POLICY = HEALTH POLICY
People around the world already are feeling the effects of climate-sensitive diseases that kill millions, according to WHO. Malnutrition causes more than 3.5 million deaths a year, diarrheal diseases kill more than 1.8 million annually and malaria nearly 1 million.
Other recent events foreshadow a climate-altered future — the 2003 European heat wave that killed 70,000; major Rift Valley fever outbreaks in Africa; 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,800 and displaced thousands; malaria in the East African highlands; and cholera epidemics in Bangladesh.
“Global warming is unlike many other health threats,” said Dr. Jonathan Patz, a professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences and at the Nelson Institute, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “because, unlike single-agent toxins or microbes, climate change affects multiple pathways of harmful exposures to our health.”
Scientists from the University of Minnesota, Stanford University in California, Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and Industrial Economics in Massachusetts address one of those paths in a February study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“For each billion ethanol-equivalent gallons of fuel produced and combusted in the U.S.,” the authors wrote, “the combined climate-change and health costs are $469 million for gasoline, $472-952 million for corn ethanol depending on biorefinery heat source (natural gas, corn stover or coal) and technology, but only $123-208 million for cellulosic ethanol depending on feedstock (prairie biomass, [a grass called] Miscanthus, corn stover or switchgrass).”
“The challenges posed by climate change urgently demand improving public health infrastructure, energy conservation and urban planning policies,” Patz said.
PROTECTING PUBLIC HEALTH
Around the world, public health officials are assessing the measures already in place and determining future needs for protecting health from climate change, with a focus on women and children in developing nations and other vulnerable populations. In May 2008, the 193 member states that constitute the World Health Assembly passed a resolution calling for stronger commitment from member states and WHO to protect health from climate change.
In the United States, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) leads efforts to anticipate the health effects of climate change, to ensure systems are in place to detect and track them and take steps to prepare for, respond to and manage associated risks. CDC scientists already have expertise in disease surveillance, environmental health, geographic information systems and modeling, preparedness planning and training, said Dr. Howard Frumkin, director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
WHO and its partners ― the U.N. Environmental Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.N. World Meteorological Organization ― are devising a work plan and research agenda to get better estimates of the scale and nature of health vulnerability and to identify health protection strategies and tools, including better surveillance and forecasting systems and stronger basic health services.
In its recent report on global research priorities for protecting health from climate change, WHO offered a series of recommendations for priority areas of research and risk management and guidance on how to support further progress on the issue. Highlights include the following:
• Research on climate change and health must be placed more firmly within the context of improving global health and health equity rather than being considered as a stand-alone issue.
• Improved risk assessment is needed to inform decisionmakers about the broad range of health impacts from climate change at international, national and local levels.
• Research on the health effects of mitigation and adaptation decisions in other sectors can help to avoid harm and identify opportunities for health promotion.
More information about climate change and health is available on the CDC and WHO Web sites.
