Climate challenge could boost world health

Tuesday June 23rd, 2015

A world worried about climate change would improve its health, according to a major study today.

Climate change poses a major threat to human health and could be "potentially catastrophic," according to the study in The Lancet.

The problems include not just the effects of heat and unpredictable weather - but also social instability and increased migration as people flee poverty, experts said.

Action on climate change will bring benefit through reduced burning of fossil fuels and increased physical activity through walking and cycling.

Improved public transport should also cut accidents and pollution.

Project leader Professor Anthony Costello, of University College, London, said: “Climate change has the potential to reverse the health gains from economic development that have been made in recent decades – not just through the direct effects on health from a changing and more unstable climate, but through indirect means such as increased migration and reduced social stability.

"However, our analysis clearly shows that by tackling climate change, we can also benefit health, and tackling climate change if fact represents one of the greatest opportunities to benefit human health for generations to come.”

Fellow expert Professor Peng Gong, from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, said: "The health community has responded to many grave threats to health in the past. It took on entrenched interests such as the tobacco industry, and led the fight against HIV/AIDS."

Another expert Professor Peter Byass, of Umeå University, Sweden, said: "We know that mitigation and adaptation around climate change can have positive health effects, for example both by reducing emissions and improving dietary habits.

"Effective climate action may actually prove to be one of the greatest opportunities to also improve global health that we have ever had.”

The findings were welcomed by the UK Royal College of Physicians.

President Professor Jane Dacre said: "Doctors have always taken a wider view of health than simply treating the individual patient in front of them, and this report continues that tradition, showing that for a public health issue like climate change, governments could have more influence on population health than individual patient behaviours."

Lancet 23 June 2015 [abstract]

Tags: Fitness | General Health | World Health

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