38 HEALTHCARE
WHO Director-General on health and climate
Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General
Opening remarks at the Conference on Health and Climate Geneva, Switzerland 27 August 2014
Excellencies, honourable ministers, distinguished participants, colleagues in the United Nations system, ladies and gentlemen,
It is good to see so many ministers here. Let me warmly welcome you to this conference on health and climate. Thank you for giving us your expertise and your time. You have an important job to do.
Debates about climate change are still not giving sufficient attention to the profound effects that climate variables have on health.
In my view, the well-documented health effects are what matters most. Climate and weather affect the air people breathe, the food they eat, and the water they drink.
Signals about what human activities have done to the environment are becoming increasingly shrill. Records for extreme weather events are being broken a record number of times.
Our planet is losing its capacity to sustain human life in good health. Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most disturbing report to date, with a strong focus on the consequences for health. That report also underscored specific health interventions that strengthen resilience to climate change and contribute to sustainable development.
I am aware of speculation that climate change may influence the frequency of outbreaks of Ebola virus disease
In March, The World Health Organization revised its estimates of the health effects of air pollution upwards. In 2012, exposure to air pollution killed around 7 million people worldwide, making it the world’ s largest single environmental health risk.
Climate variables contribute to natural disasters, with their related population displacements, lost livelihoods, destroyed infrastructures, and conditions of crowding and filth that favour explosive outbreaks of disease. Diarrhoeal diseases, the second biggest killer of young children, flourish under such conditions..
Many of the world’ s most worrisome diseases have transmission cycles that are profoundly shaped by conditions of heat and humidity and patterns of rainfall. As one important example,