Climate Change and Health in Canada

Ford, Lea Berrang

Changes in our global and regional climate systems will have important implications for health and health systems (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) . The World Health Organization estimated that in the year 2000, climate change caused approximately 150,000 excess deaths worldwide, as well as 5 million disability-adjusted life years (19) . Temperature and weather have direct effects on mortality and morbidity through the occurrence of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, cold periods, storms, floods, and droughts (11, (23) (24) (25) . Such events can, in turn, affect the incidence of food-borne and water-borne disease (26, 27) . The habitat and survival of insect species capable of transmitting many vector-borne diseases are affected by temperature and water regimes (28, 29) . Many pathogen replication cycles are also determined by temperature conditions. Indirect impacts of climate change on livelihoods, such as increased economic vulnerability, reduced availability of food resources, and reduced allocation of government funding for health systems, may also have important, though unquantified, impacts on global health systems (2, 12, 14, 18, 20, 30) .