Climate Change 'Major Threat To Human Health'

Climate change is the biggest threat to human health this century, according to a new report in The Lancet.The medical journal commissioned a team of experts from University College London to compile a dossier of evidence showing the effects climate change will have on our health.

They said fatal heatwaves, food shortages, water scarcity and extreme weather events will all increase if global warming is allowed to continue.

The global health service will carry the biggest cost burden.

For example, they said events like the European heatwave, which killed around 70,000 people in 2003, will be more common. That means in Britain, the number of skin cancers and cataracts will increase.

And mosquito-spread diseases like malaria, traditionally common in the tropics, will be more widespread.

Dr Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said doctors have been in denial over climate change and need a wake-up call.

He explained: "What I hope it does is to make them realise that climate change is an urgent and dangerous issue that effects the patients they see on a daily basis.

"Their patients might not die tomorrow because of climate change but for them, their children and their grandchildren, climate change is going to be a danger to all of us."

The report pointed to scientific evidence that the 12 warmest years on record so far, have occurred in the last 13 years.

They said most scientists now agree that limiting temperature rise to a relatively safe level of two degrees by the end of the century is highly unlikely.

And they said food and water shortages - both a huge problem for the health service -were already increasing in certain parts of the world where the poorest will be hardest hit.

But while inaction could cost our NHS billions, the report also said, if we act now to cut our emissions, the health cost could decrease dramatically.

Professor Mark Maslin, director of UCL's Environment Institute, told Sky News Online: "If we redesign our cities so people walk more, cycle more, use public transport, suddenly we drop the incidence of obesity, heart disease, strokes and stress-related illness.

"So what we can see is that there are huge amounts of win-win solutions. If we lower the carbon emissions of our cities, we increase our health."

The authors hope their report will have the same sobering effect on health professionals as the Stern Report on the cost of climate change had on economists.

Above all, they say the Department of Health needs to start working with other government departments, to ensure action is taken now.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "We welcome any initiatives that highlight the health impacts of climate change, and encourage the health sector's role in reducing emissions."