Jennifer Mendoza
Research expert covering health, pharma and medtech
Climate change and health- Statistics & Facts
Global climate change is predicted to negatively impact regions around the world through extreme weather events, increasing temperatures, heat waves and droughts, and rising sea levels. Such changes could potentially threaten food and water supplies, displace those in high risk areas, exacerbate existing political tensions or create new ones, and impact the world economy. Aside from these repercussions, climate change will also have great consequences for human health by increasing disease risk, creating dangerous and unsuitable living environments, and intensifying the risk of injury or death from storms and extreme weather. Three surveys from different medical societies from 2014 and 2015 found that 57 percent of surveyed physicians believed their patients’ health was already being affected by climate change through injuries due to storms. Another 45 percent felt climate change had affected their patients’ through changing heat, and 40 percent through vector-borne infections.
