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by MARGIE MASON
Better health from fighting global warming
BANGKOK: Countries that start
battling global warming now won’t have to wait generations to see
the rewards: burning cleaner fuels can yield immediate health
benefits that save lives and money, world health experts say.
Big developing countries like China and India can play a huge role
in improving health by expanding their use of cleaner energy
sources, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, a scientist on global
environmental change and health at the World Health Organisation
(WHO) in Geneva, said.
“The policy options that you choose to try to cut (carbon dioxide)
emissions also have very important health effects,” he said. “If
you choose the right ones, then you can certainly have a win-win
at cutting CO2 emissions and directly benefiting health.”
Urban air pollution, for example, kills about 800,000 people a
year globally. More than half of those deaths occur in China, the
world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter after the US.
Promoting walking or cycling instead of driving could further
reduce major health problems like diabetes and heart disease that
are striking many rapidly developing countries, Campbell-Lendrum
said.
A climate report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), a UN network of 2,000 scientists, is being hammered out
here by delegates from more than 120 countries. A final version is
expected by today.
Much of the talks have centred around the high cost of promoting
greener policies, but WHO experts said governments should consider
how much they could save in medical costs by taking measures now
to minimise heat waves, disease and water scarcity that will come
as temperatures rise.
“Prevention is cheaper than cure,” Hisashi Ogawa, regional adviser
for healthy settings and environment at the WHO’s regional Western
Pacific office in Manila said. “Disease and deaths will occur, and
the economy will be affected because sick people cannot produce
services and products, so GDP will go down.”
Mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue fever are expected to spike
with rising temperatures, in addition to diseases caused by
diarrhoea that are associated with flooding.
Malnutrition from lower crop yields also is predicted to plague
the developing world along with disease and injury from heat
waves, storms and droughts, according to an IPCC report released
last month.
“The problems are not decades away – they’re already here,” the
scientists said.
The WHO conservatively estimated that 150,000 people died
worldwide in 2000 from health issues related to climate change,
with nearly 90% of those fatalities in Asia and Africa. The
figures do not include deaths linked to air pollution.
An ongoing outbreak of malaria in Papua New Guinea had been blamed
on global warming because mosquitoes that spread the disease were
never able to breed in the highland’s cool climate. Rising
temperatures had changed that, Ogawa said.
Asian cities also are among the most at risk worldwide for rising
sea levels, according to a study published in March in the journal
Environment and Urbanisation.
Three-quarters of all people living in vulnerable areas are in
Asia – China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia – have the
largest populations residing in endangered coastal areas. Between
1994 and 2004, half of all people killed by flooding worldwide
were living in Asia.
“The projections are overwhelmingly negative,” Kristi Ebi, an
epidemiologist in Virginia said.
She was the lead author on the earlier health chapter for the IPCC.
“Most of these diseases and health outcomes we worry about, we’ve
dealt with before. The question is how to get everything in place
as quickly as possible to reduce these impacts now.”
Ebi said poor countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, would be
forced to bear the brunt of damage already caused by rising
temperatures. – AP
 
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