Governments need to put human health at the heart of their climate-change policy, World Health Organisation Vietnamese representative Dr. Jean-Marc Olive said on April 7.

“We need Health Ministries to strengthen their public health policies and practices to meet the challenges of climate change and protect their populations,” he said.

“We need to pay more attention to clean water supply, immunisation, diseases surveillance, and mosquito control and disaster preparedness.”

Dr Olive was speaking at a Health Ministry-WHO sponsored meeting held in Hanoi for World Health Day - April 7.

Theme of the day, observed throughout the world, was Protecting Health From Climate Change and its purpose was to both strengthen public health and reduce the negative impact of climate change.

The WHO was using World Health Day to warn the world’s people that the climate change could put the health of millions at risk, said Dr Olive, adding that Climate-sensitive ailments such as diarrhoea, malaria and protein-energy malnutrition already caused more than three million deaths each year.

Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan told the meeting: “Health care will be among the sectors to be hardest hit by climate change.”

It would threaten all humanity but the poor and the people living near the poverty line would be the first impacted, he said.

Vietnam is one of five countries likely to be most heavily impacted by climate change. Higher temperatures will have a negative impact on human health and an increased risk of disease in the young and the elderly. Fiercer and more frequently storms will cause floods that will destroy houses, schools, hospitals and pollute water supplies. Dirty water is the major cause of diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid fever, and such mosquito-born diseases as dengue fever and malaria.

WHO said that climate change may already be increasing the number of deaths - now more than 150,000 a year – from malaria, diarrhoea and malnutrition. Half the deaths are in the Asia-Pacific

Source: VNA