UN says climate change poses growing health threat

GENEVA-Climate change poses a growing health threat, the United Nations warned on Wednesday(August 27th), saying extreme weather and rising global temperatures could kill hundreds of thousands of people and spread disease.

“Climate change is no longer only an environmental issue,” World Health Organization (WHO) climate-change chief Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum said in Geneva.

The U.N. health agency on Wednesday started a three-day conference combining climate and health issues with the goal of emphasizing health at a special U.N. climate summit in New York City in late September.

“If we don’t act to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, we’ll be living on a planet which is basically in many important respects unsuitable, in many locations, for health,” Campbell-Lendrum told reporters.

Climate change affects health-linked resources such as clean air, safe drinking water, food, and shelter. Warmer temperature and altered rainfall patterns also may extend the range of mosquitoes that spread deadly diseases.-SPA