Children’s Vulnerability to Environmental Exposures: Globally

Oct 14m 2010

Source: NIH

National Library of Medicine

National Center for Biotechnology Information

Photo Source: Unsplash

Globally, for all ages, the burden of disease attributable to climate change in the year 2000 was > 150,000 deaths (0.3% of global deaths) and 5.5 million lost DALYs (0.4% of global burden) (McMichael et al. 2004; WHO 2002a). These estimates from 2000, which are the most current available, are likely conservative because they include only five health outcomes: direct temperature effects, diarrhea, malnutrition, flood-related injury, and malaria.

Changing climate-sensitive issues and diseases affecting children

McMichael (2001a) set out an epidemiologic framework with three primary challenges: a) establishing response functions for climate-sensitive diseases using existing data sets, b) conducting targeted surveillance to detect changes in current climate-sensitive disease outcomes, and c) projecting climate-sensitive health burdens. Above we reviewed efforts to quantify the existing global burden of climate-sensitive disease among children, which builds on the first two of McMichael’s tasks. We now focus on some specific climate-sensitive health risks that also build on baseline epidemiology but further detail the mechanisms underlying these child-specific risk factors.

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