150,000 Deaths Blamed on Climate Change
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by Peter Calamai Toronto Star December 9, 2005
MONTREAL, Canada
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U.N. calls toll conservative ~ Study finds poor nations hit hardest
The numbers are no longer theoretical computer projections of the toll of climate change on human health at some far-off time in the future.Instead they're real victims, estimates of the people who died around the world in 2000 because global warming triggered heat waves, floods or droughts, or made worse some infectious disease.That number is conservatively put at 150,000 in a detailed study carried out for the World Health Organization (WHO).While the overwhelming bulk of those deaths took place in the world's poorest countries, the health fallout from climate change is also already claiming lives in the rich countries of Western Europe and, less so, in Canada and the United States.The WHO study and what countries can do to stop such death tolls from mounting were the focus of two sessions at the mammoth United Nations climate change conference scheduled to wind up here today.More than 10,000 participants from 182 countries have spent the last two weeks arguing about reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are inexorably driving up average temperatures globally, shifting precipitation patterns and — many experts fear — increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.But a side effect of climate change that has not received much attention until now is its mostly deleterious impact on human health."Nothing will mobilize people like health. We can really drive the agenda," says Maria Neira, an epidemiologist who heads WHO's program for protection of the human environment.Yet what really drives the public policy agenda are numbers; unfortunately for a long time public health advocates didn't have anything really definite in terms of the number of deaths that could be laid at the door of climate change.Enter Dr. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, now with WHO but then at the famed London School of Hygiene, long a pioneering force in public health issues. He started with the qualitative guesses about the health impact from the 2001 assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."We didn't know what the IPCC comments actually meant in terms of deaths. Is it a big thing or a little thing?" he says.After several years and much hard slogging, Campbell-Lendrum and his colleagues had their answer: the excess deaths from climate change in 2000 total at least 150,000 worldwide. That estimate was reached by comparing the climate in 2000 with the conditions averaged over 1961 to 1990, a 30-year-period that avoids distortions from year-to-year fluctuations.The excess deaths are a minimum because researchers tabulated mortality figures for only four categories — floods, diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition.They focused on the rise in average temperatures in different regions, yet usually it's temperature extremes that kill people. Because information is slim, the researchers also did not add deaths from forest fires or dust storms as climate-caused, although some definitely are.The experts acknowledge that 150,000 is not yet a really big a number in a world where malnutrition and infectious diseases such malaria and diarrhea claim an estimated 6 million lives annually. But the extra mortality and illness linked to climate change has the potential to balloon rapidly.To illustrate this point, Campbell-Lendrum recounts a study that charted hospital admissions for diarrheal diseases in Lima, Peru, between 1993 and 1998. Every increase of one degree Celsius in average temperature produced an 8 per cent increase in hospital admissions."The burden of climate-sensitive diseases is so heavy in the poorest countries that even a small change makes a big difference," he says. And many — maybe most — of those deaths are preventable, if governments were better prepared."Don't come out of here thinking it's only climate change that's to blame," Dr. Jonathan Patz cautioned participants at a seminar put on by WHO and the federal health department.A physician and an environmental ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, Patz is a leading expert on climate change and human health. He was the senior author of a comprehensive review of the topic that was the cover theme in a recent issue of Nature, a leading scientific journal. The review gave new prominence to Campbell-Lendrum's 150,000 deaths figure, initially presented last year in a little-read WHO publication. Patz uses the example of the 35,000 people who died in Europe during a heat wave in the summer of 2003."People don't die from heat alone. There were multiple factors, including a lack of care," he says.The WHO's Dr. Roberto Bertollini is more blunt."The majority of those deaths were preventable," he says. "People in the health system were not prepared to respond. There was a lack of awareness that this could be a problem."Yet the health system in Europe had plenty of warning.The IPCC 2001 report specifically flagged a high probability of extended high summer daytime temperatures in Europe with the added danger of little relief since nighttime lows would also reach new highs. That's exactly what happened in Chicago in July 1995, claiming 514 lives and producing more than 3,000 hospital admissions than usual.Yet despite that lesson from America and the remarkably accurate forecasts from climate experts, nursing homes and hospitals across Western Europe emptied of staff for the traditional August holidays in 2003, leaving patients at the mercy of blistering heat with minimal care."This affected countries that are normally well prepared to respond to health emergencies," says Bertollini, director of WHO's program on health and environment in Europe.Some responses were straightforward. In 2003, only Lisbon and Rome had a system of public warnings when heat waves were forecast. Now cities in five more countries have followed suit, including a traditional torpid country like Spain.But anticipating and preparing for most climate change fallout is more complex. At the U.N. climate conference here the World Health Organization released three reports that highlight key aspects of the health impact, how people can adapt to these new threats and what public health authorities can do to reduce the negative impacts.Canada's preparedness appears to lag behind Europe's judging by presentations at the health sessions as well as reports made available here. A national assessment of health vulnerabilities to climate change won't be complete until mid-2007, federal health official Jacinthe Séquin told one session.Séquin says the study was looking at just two health issues, air quality and extreme weather, because resources were not available to investigate all potential impacts from climate change.Yet the regions with the worst prospects of coping with the health fallout are largely those that the WHO study predicts will be hardest hit — the developing countries of Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa."Even without climate change, Africa already has its hands full with health problems," says Anthony Nyong, from Nigeria's Centre for Environmental Resources and Health Research.Higher temperatures speed the development of the parasite that transmits malaria via mosquitoes. In addition to the well-publicized malaria threat, Nyong says climate change is also linked to an increased incidence of Rift Valley fever, cholera and meningitis. Combine the rise in infectious diseases spread by insects and water with other climate-health impacts such as increased risks of both floods and drought, water scarcity and air pollution, and the world is almost certain to see many more environmental refugees, says Wisconsin's Patz."Forced population migration, with all its health risks, could be the huge hidden part of this climate change iceberg," he says.And how has the WHO study helped so far, Campbell-Lendrum was asked."It sets limits to our ignorance and helps us stop saying really stupid things, like `We're all going to die.'"
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Source: Toronto Star
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