KUALA TERENGGANU: Covid-19 pandemic offers glimpse of future disruption to lives and livelihoods as no country is immune from the health harms of climate change.
Healthcare systems are ill-prepared as extreme heat leads to fast-rising mortality worldwide and threatens livelihoods of millions.
But, by tackling converging climate and Covid-19 pandemic crises in tandem, millions of people's health can be improved and lives saved.
These are among the findings of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change 2020 report presented at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu today.
UMT has been actively engaged in reseach on climate change mitigation and adaptation focussing on food security over the last year.
According to the report, unless urgent action is taken, climate change will increasingly threaten global health, disrupt lives and livelihoods, and overwhelm healthcare systems.
The authors say that the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic offers a key moment to act on climate change.
"The pandemic has shown us that when health is threatened on a global scale, our economies and ways of life can come to a standstill," says Dr Ian Hamilton, executive director of the Lancet Countdown.
"The threats to human health are multiplying and intensifying due to climate change, and unless we change course our healthcare systems are at risk of being overwhelmed in the future.
"This year's devastating US wildfires and tropical storms in the Caribbean and Pacific, coinciding with the pandemic, have tragically illustrated that the world doesn't have the luxury of dealing with one crisis at a time," he said.
New evidence from the Lancet Countdown report shows that the last two decades have seen a 54 per cent increase in heat-related deaths in older people, with a record 2.9 billion additional days of heatwave exposure affecting over-65s in 2019 – almost twice the previous high.
The report – a collaboration between experts from more than 38 institutions including the World Health Organisation (WHO), World Meteorological Organisation, and led by University College London, publishes on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, when the world pledged to limit global warming to well below 2.0 degree celcius.
From small islands to big cities, climate-related health shocks may arise in the future due to difficulties anticipating the impacts of extreme heat and finding successful ways to adapt.
Impacts of this include growing levels of heat-related mortality among vulnerable people in all parts of the world, with the lives of 296,000 older people claimed in 2018.
Livelihoods are at risk too as heat is increasingly affecting people's ability to work outdoors in developing regions, with significant economic implications.
Last year saw a continued loss in productivity, with India accounting for 40 per cent of the total 302 billion work hours lost.
Heat and drought are also driving sharp increases in exposure to wildfires, resulting in burns, heart and lung damage from smoke, and the displacement of communities, the report revealed.
Some 128 countries have experienced an increase in population exposure to wildfires since the early 2000s, with the United States seeing one of the largest increases.
By the end of the century, the report finds that projected sea level rise could threaten the displacement of up to 565 million people, exposing them to a wide range of health harms, the report revealed.
Professor Hugh Montgomery, Lancet Countdown co-chair and an intensive care doctor, who is from the University College London, said climate change drives a cruel wedge which widens existing health inequalities between and within countries.
"Our report shows that just for Covid-19, older people are particularly vulnerable, and those with a range of pre-existing conditions including asthma and diabetes are at even greater risk."
New data in the report highlights that healthcare capacity to deal with these future health shocks is still not enough, despite improvements.
Only half of countries surveyed have drawn up national health and climate plans, with just four reporting adequate national funding, and less than half of countries have conducted vulnerability and adaptation assessments for health.
Meanwhile, two thirds of global cities surveyed expect climate change to seriously compromise public health infrastructure.
Montgomery said the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown a spotlight on the current ability of healthcare.
"Flames, flood and famine do not respect national borders or bank accounts. Nation's wealth offers no protection against health impact of even a 1.2 degree celcius rise in average global temperature change, he said.
