Author: GHealth News

Egypt will host the COP27 United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2022, the country's environment ministry said on Thursday. The North African country will hold the conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, it added. The decision was taken during this year's conference, COP26, which is hosted by the United Kingdom in Glasgow. Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared in September his country's interest in hosting the COP27 on behalf of the African continent. The country would work to make the conference "a radical turning point in international climate efforts in coordination with all parties, for the benefit of Africa and the entire world," he said at the time. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) was selected on Thursday to host the COP28 international ...

If you thought the COVID pandemic was disruptive and deadly, climate change will be so much worse. So said a slew of panelists Tuesday at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, warning about escalating climate-linked health threats such as disease, heatstroke and air pollution. But they also called out the health systems in rich nations as part of the problem, with the healthcare sector responsible for up to 5% of global carbon emissions. “We need to recognize the role of health systems as emitters,” said Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary of health. “We cannot stand back and only tell others what they should do to protect our patients.” The main sources of emissions from the healthcare sector include the manufacture and transport of medical goods, as well as the construct...

By: JULIA GILLARD The damaging effects of a warming planet are not limited to the environment. The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) currently underway in Glasgow is an ideal opportunity for world leaders to demonstrate that they understand that global warming is a health crisis, and that they are learning from the pandemic response. The threat COVID-19 poses to human health is now well understood around the world. In contrast, the enormous health threat of global warming, with its broad array of persistent impacts on our well-being, is under-recognized and poorly understood. Yet climate change is harming human health right now. During the 2020 monsoon season in Bangladesh, for example, water flooded a quarter of the country. More than 1.3 million homes we...

Sugar-cane cutters in Nicaragua, where abnormally high numbers of agricultural workers suffer from CKDu (chronic kidney disease of unknown causes). Photograph: Ed Kashi/VII Chronic kidney disease linked to heat stress could become a major health epidemic for millions of workers around the world as global temperatures increase over the coming decades, doctors have warned. More research into the links between heat and CKDu – chronic kidney disease of uncertain cause – is urgently needed to assess the potential scale of the problem, they have said. Unlike the conventional form of chronic kidney disease (CKD), which is a progressive loss of kidney function largely seen among elderly people and those afflicted with other conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, epidemics of CKDu h...