Posted on 01/24/2008 9:41:06 PM PST by neverdem
Contact: Rebecca Spargo rspargo@bma.org.uk 020-738-36174 BMJ-British Medical Journal
Global environmental change and health: impacts, inequalities, and the health sector
Climate change will have a huge impact on human health and bold environmental policy decisions are needed now to protect the world’s population, according to the author of an article published in the BMJ today.
The threat to human health is of a more fundamental kind than is the threat to the world’s economic system, says Professor McMichael, a Professor of public health from the Australian National University. “Climate change is beginning to damage our natural life-support system,” he says.
The risks to health are many, and include the impact of heat waves, floods and wildfires, changes in infectious disease patterns, the effect of worsening food yields and loss of livelihoods.
The World Health Organisation estimates that a quarter of the world’s disease burden is due to the contamination of air, water, soil and food – particularly from respiratory infections and diarrhoeal disease.
Climate change, says Professor McMichael, will make these and other diseases worse. While it is unlikely to cause entirely new diseases it will alter the incidence, range and seasonality of many existing health disorders. So, for example, by 2080 between 20 and 70 million more people could be living in malarial regions due to climate change.
The adverse health impacts will be much greater in low-income countries and vulnerable sub-populations than in richer nations.
Professor McMichael says:
“Poverty cannot be eliminated while environmental degradation exacerbates malnutrition, disease and injury. Food supplies need continuing soil fertility, climatic stability, freshwater supplies and ecological support (such as pollination). Infectious diseases cannot be stabilised in circumstances of climatic instability, refugee flows and impoverishment.”
The relationship between the environment and health is complex. For example, as India modernises it expects the health of its population to improve, yet industrialisation also means a rapidly increased level of coal-burning and greater global emissions. This in turn leads to climate change, the impact of which is felt most by vulnerable populations.
Professor McMichael concludes that the global changes we are seeing now are unprecedented in their scale, and healthcare systems should develop strategies to deal with the resulting growing burden of disease and injury. More bold and far-sighted policy decisions need to be taken at national and international level to arrest the process and health professionals “have both the opportunity and responsibility to contribute to resolving this momentous issue.”
agitprop worthy of the KGB
(snore)
Mankind is the dominant species on this planet cause we can adapt to change, well at least until the politicians, and bureaucrats came along.
I recently read an article that compared heat related deaths and cold related deaths. The heat deaths mere miniscule compared to the cold deaths. I’ll see if I can figure out where I saw this.
For a professor of public health he sure doesn't comprehend the dynamics of nature.
There was a great word for this in the 19th Century: Humbug!
Living poses a threat to human health.
Nanny ping, if I ever saw one.
Women and children hit hardest.
;-)
Climate change is beginning to damage our natural life-support system,
NAW thats liberalism and it always has.....
I'm kinda partial to "poppycock!". Drivel is good too.
You forgot the megabarf alert...
Is The British Medical Journal a pseudonym for The Onion?
Nah, the KGB always started with at least a kernel of truth.
Notice the hyperbole is getting more and more desperate??
Even though GLOBAL WARMING ended in 1998, we are ALL GOING TO DIE if we don’t do something about it, and soon...
We Must Embrace Environmentalism, For Socialism To Survive
-Hans-Jochen Vogel, Chairman of the West German Social Democratic Party-1989
Gorbachev said in 1987 that ENVIRONMENTALISM would be the vehicle for Socialist control of the world.
Actually, we have a more current example. If you want a major impact on world health, ban the only truly effective pesticide for killing mosquitos. The libtards did that, and literally over a hundred million of the poorest in the world have died as a result. Far more than EVERY war in modern history combined. But hey, it is for the good/god of Gia, so that is OK. /libtard think
“Women and children hit hardest.”
You left out “GW’s, Republicans’, and/or Christians’ intent/fault.”
It’s a lucky thing Professor McMichael is peddling this drivel in Australia instead of India. The Indians would laugh this “Professor of Public Health” out of the country if tried to tell them modernizing has made them worse off. Too bad that in the West a crackpot like this can safely collect a paycheck while he watches his students’ skulls implode from terminal boredom.
Liberalism is a disease, and it’s infiltrated every single walk of life.
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