User:Ygpalencia/Effects of global warming on human health

The effects of global warming on human health are included in the effects of global warming effects of global warming on humans. These include direct effects on human health related to changes in temperatures, floods, and storms (heat shocks, injuries, traumas), as well as indirect effects resulting from climate change as spreading of infectious diseases or malnutrition. Groups that are very vulnerable to these healthrisks are chronically ill persons, elderly or children.

The negative effects of climate change on human health can be reduced by improving health care, better disaster management and combating poverty, the costs for theses measures can be quite significant though. The effects of a significant change in the climate after 2050 will be very hard to overcome according to the predictions of the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The World Health Organization, the World Medical Association and many more health organizations are actively persuing to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement for climate change mitigation as preventative health care.

Various climate protection measures (e.g. active mobility instead of driving a car) simultaneously have positive effects on health (so-called "co-benefits").

Research and political figures
The medical fields of tropical medicine, epidemiology and Public Health are interested and research the effects of climate change on human health. More areas like the multidisciplinary field of Global Health, or in context with global warming, the field of Planetary Health have been established over recent years.

Since the First IPCC Assessment Report in 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has discussed the effects of climate change on global health. From the IPCC Second Assessment Report on a whole chapter would be dedicated to this topic.

Since 1990 the World Health Organization (WHO) publishes reports about climate change and health.

The scientific journal The Lancet and the University College London have published a comprehensive article in 2009 and 2015 on the topic of climate change and its effects on health. These report identified climate change as the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. If anthropogenic global warming continues at its current rate, the improvements in public health achieved over the last 50 years are likely to be undermined. In this regard, comprehensive climate protection measures would be the "greatest opportunity for global health in the 21st century".

Out of this working group the global network Lancet Countdown: Tracking progress on health and climate change was created, which since 2016 has summarized the state of scientific knowledge on the topic and tracks progress made in climate protection and adaptation (in terms of health protection) every year.

Internationally, various non-governmental organizations such as the Global Climate and Health Alliance and the Planetary Health Alliance, and in Germany the German Climate Change and Health Alliance, are also committed to the implementation of climate protection measures as health protection.

In 2019, the first professorship for Climate Change and Health (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Charité) was created in Germany.

Pathways of climate change impact on health
In its fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes three ways in which climate change can affect health:


 * 1) Direct effects, mainly influenced by changes in the frequency of extreme weather events such as heat, drought and extreme precipitation.
 * 2) Effects mediated or transmitted by natural systems, such as insects as disease vectors, waterborne diseases, allergens, water or air pollution.
 * 3) impacts strongly mediated by human systems, e.g. health effects related to employment, malnutrition (food production/distribution), mental stress.