Addressing climate change benefits public health
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Public health would benefit a lot in the global effort of addressing climate change, said an expert from the World Health Organization (WHO) at the Copenhagen climate conference on Monday.
Roberto Bertollini from the WHO's Department of Public Health and Environment said that diseases such as malaria and diarrhea are highly sensitive to temperature and precipitation, which are influenced by climate change.
He took the example of malaria in Zimbabwe. He presented a map of the current situation, which shows half of Zimbabwe in red color, which stands for high probability of malaria. But the prediction shows that nearly all the country are in red by 2050 if the climate keeps warming.
On the other hand, if stoves that burn coal could be improved in some regions, air pollutants from coal burning could also be reduced as a side effect.
According to Bertollini, benefits of 150 million more improved stoves in India are equivalent to halving the national cancer burden, while deaths from acute lower respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease could be reduced more than a million by 2020.
Though the science is broadly settled, some countries are reluctant to take action and pay the costs, because the benefits of reducing climate change are dispersed globally, and accrue over many decades, said Bertollini.
He thought the benefits in public health could be considered as a kind of offset to adaptation cost in addressing climate change.
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