Climate Change and Public Health: Direct and Indirect Impacts

This report delves into the profound impacts of climate change on public health, exploring both direct and indirect consequences. It highlights the direct effects, such as heat waves, and their association with increased mortality, particularly among the elderly. Indirect effects, including the spread of insect-borne diseases, like dengue fever, waterborne diseases due to flooding, food insecurity, and mental health disorders, are also analyzed. The report emphasizes the global nature of the problem, the role of human activities generating greenhouse gases and calls for international action to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on public health, referencing various studies and articles to support the arguments. The report also briefly touches upon the interaction between AIDS epidemic and climate change in southern Africa and its impact on food security.

Running head: Public Health 1
HEALTH IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Name
Institutional Affiliation

Public Health 2
Climate change, as argued by Haines (1), is a global phenomenon that is happens due to gases
from greenhouses accumulating in the atmosphere. Climate change affects general public
health of the world’s population either directly or indirectly. This post shall be discussing the
various direct effects and indirect ones which affect the change of climate in public health in
areas like Australia and also the whole world in general.
DIRECT EFFECTS
One of the profoundly felt direct effect of change in climate is the waves of the heat. A
Haines (2) recorded that more deaths have been witnessed in Wales and also in England and
they are associated with the increase in waves of heat frequency. He went on to record in his
article that “most of mortality which is excess from the heat waves is mostly related with the
cerebrovascular, respiratory causes, cardiovascular and they mostly concentrate in elderly
people.” The elderly people get the effects easily because they have weak immune system in
the body thus making the effects to enter the body more easily than in other people.
INDIRECT EFFECTS
It is expected that the increasing temperatures will cause a spread of insect disease vectors
such as mosquitoes. This means that diseases like dengue fever will be on the rise globally
and in Australia, Walter (3). Other indirect effects include a rise in the spread of waterborne
diseases due to flash floods, food insecurity caused by the tornados and whirlwinds which
destroy crops on the fields, and risk of food-related diseases caused by the contamination
released on food products from acidic rain. Severe weather also may have mental and stress-
related disorders. Environmental degradation brought about by the severe weather conditions
will also contribute to the public mental health, civil conflict and forced migration, CDC (4).
Air pollution is also part of climate change and has health implications such as asthma and
cardiovascular diseases, CDC (4).
CONCLUSION

Public Health 3
Change in climate is a global threat to public health and the environmental ecosystem brought
about by human activities that generate greenhouse gasses which people release to the
environment. As Campbell (5) states, “a problem which is global needs dimensions and
strategies which are international thus making it possible to translate local actions and the
regional ones.” Action ought to be taken to mitigate the climate change effects on public
health in the whole world.

Public Health 4
REFERENCES
1. Haines A, Kovats RS, Campbell-Lendrum D, Corvalán C. Climate change and human
health: impacts, vulnerability and public health. Public health. 2006 Jul 1;120(7):585-
96.
2. Haines A, Kovats RS, Campbell-Lendrum D, Corvalán C. Climate change and human
health: impacts, vulnerability, and mitigation. The Lancet. 2006 Jun
24;367(9528):2101-9.
3. Walter T, Stevens P, Verhoeven A, Boxall AM. title Impacts of climate change on
public health in Australia: Recommendations for new policies and practices for
adaptation within the public health sector.
4. Climate Change and Public Health - Climate Effects on Health [Internet]. 2019 [cited
2019 Oct 4]. Available from:
https://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/effects/default.htm
5. Campbell-Lendrum D, Corvalán C, Neira M. Global climate change: implications for
international public health policy. Bulletin of the World Health Organization.
2007;85:235-7.