The Umeå Centre for Global Health Research and publisher Co-Action Publishing, Sweden, have announced the publication of a cluster of articles published in the international peer reviewed open access journal Global Health Action. The article cluster, titled ‘Climate Change and Public Health: linking science and policy’, comes with a forward by Maria Neira of the WHO.
The 23 articles, authored by experts worldwide, focus on two large groups of climate-exacerbated adverse health effects in two clusters: the very direct consequences of heat on human health, including effects upon productivity, and on the indirect effects of climate change upon the spread of infectious diseases.
The articles are seen to provide global evidence of impacts and offer new tools – such as the use of remote sensing to monitor health risks from space. The authors also send an appeal to those gathering in Copenhagen next month to give centre stage to the impacts of climate change upon global health. They argue that these issues are given far too little attention in the mitigation debate, leading among other things to an underestimation of the full economic costs of climate change on human welfare.
What appear on the surface to be rather diverse issues in geographically distinct areas– sugar cane workers’ exposure to extreme heat in Costa Rica, to Rift Valley Fever in Senegal, to increased hospitalisation in Sweden during warm summers, to climate change and health in the Arctic – actually reveal common scientific and policy challenges, say health researchers Birgitta Evengard and Rainer Sauerborn. Based upon these commonalities, the editors call upon the delegations gathering at the upcoming Climate Conference in Copenhagen this December to fill research gaps, develop and monitor adaptation strategies, and above all to ‘Use health as a driver for global climate polices’.
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