With a view to a new global report on climate change and health, German doctors have called for a national heat protection plan. The frequency, duration and intensity of heat waves increasing further, warned Klaus Reinhardt, President of the Federal chamber of physicians, at a press conference in Berlin.
This calls for a better prepared emergency services, clinics, Old people’s and nursing homes. The health effects of climate change would not at some point in far-flung areas of the world, but also here and now.
The medical journal “The Lancet” was presented on Thursday a global report on the connection between climate change and health. Half a month before the UN climate change conference in Madrid, experts account for the current and future impact. CO2 emissions continue as in the past, a child born today in his 71 am. Birthday in a cut, in a four degree warmer world, said. Already now, climate change is damaging the health of many people massively.
“The issue of health played in climate change in a long role,” said Sabine Gabrysch, a Professor of climate change and health at the Charité hospital in Berlin. The have changed. Already today the effects are being felt in this country, as an additional report of scientists from Germany shows.
According to an analysis of the Helmholtz centre in Munich, there are already more heart attacks and deaths due to cardiovascular diseases on hot days. The Problem of “Lancet,”to study, according to still other dimensions to achieve: If nothing changes on the emissions of greenhouse gases, the researchers until the end of this century, with annually, five additional heat waves in the North of Germany and with up to 30 more in the South of Germany.
In nursing homes, more staff is needed to ensure, for example, that seniors drink enough, said Reinhardt. In addition to Hitzschlägen otherwise, acute renal failure, threatened by lack of fluids. Most of the heat, you are at risk besides the elderly, the Sick and workers, the infants, the chronically Outdoors, including construction workers and farmers. “We understand it as our duty to name these effects in a clear and appropriate action.”
West Nile fever, Dengue and Zika reach Europe
Ticks and mosquitoes play as Vectors of tropical infectious diseases with rising temperatures in our Latitudes, an increasing role. This year, for the first time, West Nile fever in humans in Germany, was established. The Affected had not plugged in the case of traveling abroad, but with the bite of indigenous mosquitoes with the Virus. Zika infections of mosquitoes native tiger were first reported from the South of France. The mosquitoes can also transmit Dengue and Chikungunya.
For Sebastian Ulbert Fraunhofer Institute for cell therapy and immunology in Leipzig, German Doctors have to have a mosquito-transmitted pathogens in future “on the screen”. “So, for example, the majority of West Nile Virus remained of this year, infections go undetected, because in the case of flu-like symptoms, no one thought of this pathogen.” Necessary training and a good test systems.
Allergy researchers Torsten Zuberbier of the Charité in Berlin, welcomes the Report. It’s a important aspect is lacking to him, however: as a result of climate change has increased Pollen and the flowering period is extended. In addition, all the genes from the spread of plant species such as Ambrosia in Europe.
Another, growing Problem, a group of bacteria, called Vibrio, which are also found in the Baltic sea, according to “the Lancet”. The pathogens can be gastrointestinal and wound infections cause. Since the eighties, have doubled because of higher water temperatures, the number of days, where you could be infected with Vibrios in the Baltic sea, according to the Report. In 2018, there were 107 days.
Worldwide, children most affected
Global climate change children are the most affected, said Nick Watts, head of the international Lancet consortium. Harvest declines and the consequent malnutrition, they were, for example, at the worst. This includes people in 77 percent of the countries had to Fire more and more with forest fires and similar to fight.
Global warming would, by contrast, the 1.5 ° is limited, as in the Paris climate agreement is desired and would be adhered to the promise of the countries from see it better for the future, according to the researchers.