Fizza Naeem
August 8, 2022.
Various human activities are affecting the climate. It includes cutting down forests, burning fossil fuels, carbon emissions, and raising livestock. These human activities are causing adverse effects on the ecosystem. The imbalanced ecosystem is affecting human health.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published a report in 2022. It tells that global temperatures are 1.5oC higher than in the pre-industrial period. It alarms the policymakers, health staff, and governments to change human activities.
Recently, The Lancet published a report on global heat impact on human health. The Lancet is a multinational collaboration. It works for health maintenance in response to climate change. It also cooperates with the governments, policymakers, and health professionals.
The report by The Lancet described extreme heat events in the current years. This extremity is due to natural disasters in the previous two years. The report relates the increasing heat to the emerging infectious diseases. They outlined the issue of climate change. Further, its impact on the livelihood of world communities is also discussed. Additionally, climate change affects physical and mental health and spreads infectious diseases.
IPCC 2022 reported that worse human activities are causing extreme weather conditions. These bring irreversible changes in ecological systems. The weather extremes cause food insecurity, affecting crop productivity and fishery. The most important is that climate change contributes to vector-borne transmittable diseases.
A particular issue in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is climate change. Climate change plays a significant role in spreading infectious diseases. After Covid-19, it is necessary to discuss climate change's role in spreading diseases. The report focuses on the link between changing environments and disease-causing organisms. These organisms may be water-borne, food-borne, vector-borne, and airborne. Due to this threat, medical and health experts should be alert. They should try to cut this threat by playing their role in balancing the climate.
The Lancet report also listed the increasing diseases due to climate change. These transmittable vector-borne diseases are malaria, Zika, and chikungunya.
But the question arises, how are these transmittable diseases associated with climate change?
Research declared that the climate change of a particular region affects the vectors such as insects living in that area. Their life cycle and feeding patterns get disturbed. As a result, they migrate to other sites that are more workable for them. Besides, the temperature variations also affect specific pathogens' survival time and incubation period. The most common example is a mosquito-borne disease. Mosquitoes are sensitive to changing ecosystems. They are more likely to change their habitat once their ecosystem imbalances. In this way, they transfer diseases more. Such climate and vectors' behaviors are increasing epidemics and pandemics shortly. Prof. Edward Holmes proclaimed this fear at the end of 2021. According to him, climate change is a crucial factor behind increasing pandemics.
Animals will likely group more as climate changes. The viruses will be able to transmit more between them as a group. The close contact of humans with wildlife also facilitates the virus's transfer from animals to humans. Then from humans, the virus spread in societies.
The report clarifies that governments should implement tricks to lower carbon consumption. It would help reduce health inequities and other threats of emerging pandemics.
Edited by: Ayona Mitra
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