Climate change impacts people who are not born yet
Climate change impacts people who are not born yet
April 21, 2015
It reduces the income of families, affects the health of mothers and provokes premature births, a study reveals.
Experts have already warned about the consequences for Latin America and the Caribbean of a 4 degree increase in the average global temperature: there would be 20% more droughts, 80% more tropical cyclones and the Andean glaciers would almost disappear, according to the report Turn Down the Heat by the World Bank.
However, not a lot is known about the effects that might already be felt in the health of the new generations. A recent study on extreme climate events in Colombia revealed that the health of pregnant women and of their newborn babies are affected by these phenomena. A month long heat wave for example can increase the possibility of premature births with the consequences that this can have on the future development of babies.
The effects that the study found aren’t very big: the probability to be born at full term is reduced by 0.5 percentage points and the probability to be born healthy by 0.4 percentage points. But the worrying part, according to the study, is that climate change will provoke more heat waves, in Colombia like in the rest of the world. So it is probable that the negative effects also increase.
We talked to Carlos Rodriguez-Castelan, co-author of the report and World Bank economist.
How can climate change affect the health of unborn babies?
There are several ways that extreme climate events can affect health at birth, particularly those in rural areas.
First of all, extreme weather shocks affect households’ real income either through price changes or the uncertainty if harvests will be prolific or lean. This could be currently happening to rural populations in La Guajira and other Northeast states in Colombia, for example, due to the recent El Niño climate phenomenon that has hit the region through severe droughts and heat waves.
More:
http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2015/04/21/climate-change-health-at-birth