By Sam Lister, Health Editor Climate change poses the biggest threat to human health in the 21st century but its full impact is not being grasped by the healthcare community or policymakers, a medical report concludes. The report, compiled by a commission of academics from University College London and published in The Lancet, warns that climate change risks huge death tolls caused by disease, food and water shortages and poor sanitation. The authors said that the NHS would face serious incremental pressures from heat and hygiene-related illnesses because of increasingly hot summers, greater pathogen spread with warmer temperatures, and the heightened risk of flooding. Professor Anthony Costello, a paediatrician and director of UCL Institute for Global Health, said that he had not realised the full ramifications of climate change on health until 18 months ago. Describing the threat as a “clear and present danger” that would affect billions of lives, he said that the world needed a 21st-century public health movement to deal with climate change. He added that failure to act will result in future generations feeling the same moral outrage as is felt today towards those “who brought in and did nothing to stop slavery”. “The big message of this report is that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation,” Professor Costello, the commission leader, said. “The impacts will be felt not just in the UK, but all around the world — and not just in some distant future but in our lifetimes and those of our children.” …
Professor Anthony Costello: climate change biggest threat to humans
