Does climate change directly impact on human health and disease?
We have very strong evidence that climate changes have an effect on human health. You can see the impacts of extreme weather events like the droughts in the Horn of Africa in the 1980s, El Nino events, or the 2003 heat wave across Europe. Weather related natural disasters attract the most attention because they kill large amounts of people, about 60,000 a year. They are definitely important, but we are more concerned about the climate change effects on what are already huge disease burdens. Today, 3.5 million people die every year from the consequences of malnutrition, 2.2 million from diarrheal diseases and just under 1 million from malaria. Climate change is likely to make it worse. The 2002 World Health Organization study, The Global Burden of Disease from Climate Change, estimated that climate change was causing over 150,000 additional deaths every year, mainly through increases in malaria, diarrhea and the consequences of malnutrition. How are these illnesses affected by climate c
