Current evidence that the climate is changing is overwhelming. Impacts of climate change and variability are being observed: more intense heat-waves, fires and floods; and increased prevalence of food- water- and vector-borne diseases. Climate change will put pressure on environmental and health det...erminants, such as food safety, air pollution and water quantity and quality. A climate-resilient future depends fundamentally on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Limiting warming to below 2 °C requires transformational technological, institutional, political and behavioural changes: the foundations for this are laid out in the Paris Agreement of December 2015. The health sector can lead by example, shifting to environmentally friendly practices and minimizing its carbon emissions. A climate-resilient future will increasingly depend on managing and reducing climate change risks to protect health. In the near term, this can be enhanced by including climate change in national health programming and creating climate-resilient health systems.
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There is a broad consensus nowadays that the Earth is warming up as a result of greenhouse gas emissions caused by anthropogenic activities. It is also clear that current trends in the fields of energy, development and population growth will lead to continuous and ever more dramatic climate change. ...This is bound to affect the fundamental prerequisites for maintaining good health: clean air and water, sufficient food and adequate housing. The planet will warm up gradually, but the consequences of the extreme weather conditions such as frequent
storms, floods, droughts and heat-waves will have sudden onset and acute repercussions. It is widely accepted that climate change will have an impact on the spread of infectious diseases in Europe, which is likely to bring about new public health risks in the majority of cases. Transmission of infectious diseases depends on a number of factors, including climate and environmental elements. Foodborne and waterborne diseases, for instance, are associated with high temperatures. Disease-transmitting vectors (e.g. mosquitoes, sandflies and ticks) are highly sensitive to climate conditions, including temperature and humidity; their geographical distribution will widen as climate conditions change, potentially allowing them to spread into regions where they are not currently able to live.
The primary purpose of this manual on climate change and infectious diseases is to raise the awareness and the level of knowledge of health workers at national, regional and local levels in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on the health risks associated with climate change and infectious diseases. This manual was devel-
oped as part of the WHO Regional Office for Europe project, Protecting health from climate change: a seven–country initiative, implemented with financial support from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
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The arrival and rapid spread of the mosquito-borne viral disease Chikungunya across the Americas is one of the most significant public health developments of recent years, preceding and mirroring the subsequent spread of Zika. Globalization in trade and travel can lead to the importation of these vi...ruses, but climatic conditions strongly affect the efficiency of transmission in local settings. In order to direct preparedness for future outbreaks, it is necessary to anticipate global regions that could become suitable for Chikungunya transmission. Here, we present global correlative niche models for autochthonous Chikungunya transmission. These models were used as the basis for projections under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 climate change scenarios. In a further step, hazard maps, which account for population densities, were produced. The baseline models successfully delineate current areas of active Chikungunya transmission. Projections under the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios suggest the likelihood of expansion of transmission-suitable areas in many parts of the world, including China, sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the United States and continental Europe. The models presented here can be used to inform public health preparedness planning in a highly interconnected world.
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The biosphere underlies the whole sustainable development concept, as the layer on
which society and the economy rely. Nature and biodiversity fuel the natural cycles
and life-support systems of the planet, on which humanity ultimately depends.
DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.75559
In book: Extreme WeatherPublisher: IntechOpen
Emerging evidence and experience to inform risk management in a warming world
Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change pp 47–66
This chapter reviews the emerging importance of pollen allergies in relation to ongoing climate change. Allergic diseases have been increasing in prevalence over the last decades, partly as the result of the impact of climate change. ...Increased sensitisation rates and more severe symptoms have been the partial outcome of: increased pollen production of wind-pollinated plants resulting in long-term increased abundance of pollen in the air we breathe; earlier shifts of airborne pollen seasons making occurrence of allergic symptoms harder to predict and deal with efficiently; increased allergenicity of pollen causing more severe health effects in allergic individuals; introduction of new, invasive allergenic plant species causing new sensitisations; environment-environment interactions, such as plants and hosted microorganisms, i.e. fungi and bacteria, which comprise a complex and dynamic system, with additive, presently unforeseeable influences on human health; environment-human interactions, as the consequence of a combination of environmental factors, like air pollution, global warming, urbanisation and microclimatic variability, which create a multi-resolution spatiotemporal system that requires new processing technologies and huge data inflow in order to be thoroughly investigated. We suggest that novel, real-time, personalised pollen information services, like mobile-app risk alerts, must be developed to provide the optimum first line of allergy management.
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Este documento apresenta um marco conceitual renovado das funções essenciais de saúde pública (FESP) para a Região das Américas, com o qual se pretende dar maior clareza conceitual e operacionalidade ao novo campo de atuação da saúde pública e preencher uma lacuna nas propostas conceituais... sobre o fortalecimento dos sistemas de saúde. O marco proposto apresenta um novo paradigma para a saúde pública, baseado em quatro pilares orientados para a ação: a necessidade de incorporar a abordagem dos direitos humanos às políticas públicas de saúde; a necessidade de a saúde pública ampliar seu enfoque para ter uma abordagem mais ampla dos determinantes sociais da saúde; o papel da saúde pública para garantir de forma integral e integrada o acesso a intervenções de base populacional e atenção individual de qualidade; e a necessidade de as autoridades de saúde atuarem em colaboração com outros setores e com a sociedade civil no desempenho das funções de saúde pública.
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Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that usually affects the lungs, though it can affect any organ in the body. It can develop when bacteria spread through droplets in the air. TB can be fatal, but in many cases, TB is preventable and treatable. This report examines the human rights impact of... the prevalence of Tuberculosis (TB) and Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) among the Indigenous San peoples of Namibia. Combining political economy and root-cause methodology, the report explores the socioeconomic factors that make the San vulnerable to TB and limit their access to adequate health services.
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If you are fleeing the war in Ukraine and coming to the European Union, you will find key information about your rights with regard to crossing the border into an EU country, eligibility for temporary protection and applying for international protection, as well as the rights of travel inside the Eu...ropean Union.
Available in English, Russian and Ukrainian
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This report provides an overview of the main findings of the 2019–2020 harmonised AMR monitoring in the main food-producing animal populations monitored, in carcase/meat samples and in humans. Where available, monitoring data obtained from pigs, calves, broilers, laying hens and turkeys, as well a...s from carcase/meat samples and humans were combined and compared at the EU level, with particular emphasis on multidrug resistance, complete susceptibility and combined resistance patterns to critically important antimicrobials, as well as Salmonella and E. coli isolates possessing ESBL-/AmpC-/carbapenemase phenotypes.
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It summarizes guidance on how to manage – and when to refer – children and adolescents presenting with common complaints and conditions. It includes information to enable primary health care providers to coordinate the continued care of children and adolescents with long-term conditions and dise...ases managed by specialists. Preventive and promotive measures from the newborn period to adolescence include advice on the timing and content of well-child visits, the promotion of early childhood development and health messages for adolescents.
This Pocket Book aims to improve the diagnosis and management of common conditions in children and adolescents that can be managed at the outpatient level. It helps to improve the use of laboratory and other diagnostic measures and the rational use of essential drugs and equipment.
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Environmental Research Volume 151, November 2016, Pages 115-123
Dengue is the world’s most important arboviral disease in terms of number of people affected. Over the past 50 years, incidence increased 30-fold: there were approximately 390 million infections in 2010. Globalization, trade, travel,... demographic trends, and warming temperatures are associated with the recent spread of the primary vectors Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus and of dengue. Overall, models project that new geographic areas along the fringe of current geographic ranges for Aedes will become environmentally suitable for the mosquito’s lifecycle, and for dengue transmission. Many endemic countries where dengue is likely to spread further have underdeveloped health systems, increasing the substantial challenges of disease prevention and control. Control focuses on management of Aedes, although these efforts have typically had limited effectiveness in preventing outbreaks. New prevention and control efforts are needed to counter the potential consequences of climate change on the geographic range and incidence of dengue, including novel methods of vector control and dengue vaccines.
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Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease that occurs mainly in the tropics and subtropics but has a high potential to spread to new areas. Dengue infections are climate sensitive, so it is important to better understand how changing climate factors affect the potential for geographic spread and futu...re dengue epidemics. Vectorial capacity (VC) describes a vector's propensity to transmit dengue taking into account human, virus, and vector interactions. VC is highly temperature dependent, but most dengue models only take mean temperature values into account. Recent evidence shows that diurnal temperature range (DTR) plays an important role in influencing the behavior of the primary dengue vector Aedes aegypti. In this study, we used relative VC to estimate dengue epidemic potential (DEP) based on the temperature and DTR dependence of the parameters of A. aegypti. We found a strong temperature dependence of DEP; it peaked at a mean temperature of 29.3°C when DTR was 0°C and at 20°C when DTR was 20°C. Increasing average temperatures up to 29°C led to an increased DEP, but temperatures above 29°C reduced DEP. In tropical areas where the mean temperatures are close to 29°C, a small DTR increased DEP while a large DTR reduced it. In cold to temperate or extremely hot climates where the mean temperatures are far from 29°C, increasing DTR was associated with increasing DEP. Incorporating these findings using historical and predicted temperature and DTR over a two hundred year period (1901-2099), we found an increasing trend of global DEP in temperate regions. Small increases in DEP were observed over the last 100 years and large increases are expected by the end of this century in temperate Northern Hemisphere regions using climate change projections. These findings illustrate the importance of including DTR when mapping DEP based on VC.
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Briefing Note no. 80 November 2015
Promoting health and well-being throughout Europe
Health is routinely considered in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and environmental impact assessment (EIA), following requirements of European Union directives and the Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment to the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Trans...boundary Context (Espoo Convention). Policy-makers and other sources report that these assessments mostly adopt a biophysical perspective and that few cases consider or define health in a manner which is consistent with the WHO Constitution, by considering the wider social, economic, behavioural and institutional aspects of health. This systematically conducted review of over 333 SEA and EIA cases in the WHO European Region shows that while about 80% of assessments pursue a narrow, biophysical interpretation of health, around 10% consider wider determinants when defining health, and another 10% consider wider determinants of health in the actual assessment. Twelve case studies are presented, literature is reviewed and implications for practice are considered.
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