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Supporting climate action through digital education
Supporting climate action through digital education

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1.2.1 Climate and health

The World Health Organisation describes climate change as the single greatest threat to health (WHO, 2022). The 2021 report of the Lancet Countdown, an independent international group that monitors the consequences of climate change on health using 44 indicators (Romanello et al., 2021), explains how there are multiple areas of increasing concern, including:

  • an increase in the transmission of climate-sensitive infectious diseases, such as cholera and malaria
  • extreme heat-related impacts on health, including lost work hours and reduced income due to rising temperatures
  • more extreme weather events and wildfires, which are putting food and water supplies at risk
  • inadequate measures to tackle carbon emissions and tackle inequities, including those around gender.

Figure 5 shows how different aspects of climate change can affect different aspects of health.

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Figure 5 Effects of climate change on human health