CLIMATE CHANGE AND HEALTH.

Human can live and survive in an advantageous environment when the temperature alters from
15-31 degree cencius and the relative moisture is from 60 -80%. When meteorological factors go
too low, ( air temperature is about -30 degree cencius ) or too high ( 45 degree cencius ), our
bodies will become disoder, or we can even die. On the occasion of The World Meteorological’s
Day , we introduce to you an article from PhD’s Pham Xuan Ninh .

An overall picture.
Recent studies of scientists coming from all over the world show that climate change has
occurred worldwide and affected strongly to many countries and lives in on the Earth. Climate
change creates more and more natural disasters, catastrophes especially floods, storms,
droughts,earthquakes, typhoons whose intensity, scales… are increasing. In recent years, huge
typhoons appear more commonly because of the climate change, they destroy houses,
contructions, crops and kill many people. The risk of Tsunami always threatens lots of countries
in the world. Earthquakes , floods tend to occur more often. Most recently, in 2009, earthquakes
took place in some Asia countries ( China, Haitii... ), killed and injured 250 people in Haiti,
created damages on economy, policy and environmet. In 2008 , after heavy rains , floods
damaged a lot of crops and killed many people in our countries. Floods polute the environment,
besides, rain water sweeps away dirty subtances, waste, castle dung, animal death bodies… from
the ground and polutes the water from rivers, lakes… Dung and waste also a good place for
mosquitoes, flies, rats to live and develop, then they create a great deal of infectious diseases ,
which will affect directly to our people health.

Việt Nam is valuated as a developing countries, we have a long line of beach and have to suffer
seriously from climate change, especially when the sea level increases. In the past 50 years, the
annual temperature of Vietnam has risen about 0.5- 0.7 degree cencius, and 20 cm of the sea
level. According to ( bộ tại nguyên và môi trường ), in the end of the 21 century, the average
temperature of Vietnam will increase 2.3 oC more than the one in 1980-1999 and the sea level
can rise about 75cm. This could seriously impact our manufacturing, our lives and the health of
people living in seaside delta areas.

Direct impacts on health.

Climate change may affect directly or indirectly to our lives and public health in every countries,
especially the health of the poor living in areas which could be easily influenced by climate
change ( such as Tsunami, or tropical infected diseases… ). Direct impact of climate change on
our health through exchanging relationships of power and material between people and
surrounding nature brings about changes in phylosology, general habits, the ability of adopting
and body’s reactions to these impacts. The rise of the air temperature creates negative effects and
risks with old people, people with heart diseases, mental problems, allergy. Indirect impacts of
climate change on our health through the origin of diseases tend to develop and infect flu such as
A/H1N1 or A/H5N1, diarrhea, cholera… besides, climate change increase some tropical diseases
such as malaria, petechial fever, Japanese encephalitis, it also creates good conditions for viruses
and insects to develop ( such as flies, mosquitoes, rats, ticks, fleas). Climate change is one of the
reasons which leads to the coming back of tropical infected diseases (….. ) and the appearance of
new infected diseases such as ( SARS, A/H5N1, A/H1N1), which push the mutation procedure
of A/H5N1, A/H1N1 virus faster. Human daily activities creates changes in the ecosystem under
water and on land , illegal hunting decreases , or even kills some rare animals, the rise of
greenhouse gases is a main reason of the trend of global warming, the destruction of the ozone
layers leads to the development of the ultraviolet radiation on the Earth, and creates skin cancer
and eyes diseases.

Climate change; why ?

Human activities such as deforestation, unplanned exploition pollute the environment, destroy
the ecological balance and biological variaty. In Vietnam, lots of forests are ruined, land is
eroded, degenerated which directly threaten people’s lives and health. Waste also seriously
contributes to the pollution. In the daily lives, we discard many different kinds of wastes. At the
moment, waste is the most urgent problem in our country, it slowly pollutes the environmet,
affects seriously to our health. Waste is divided into 3 main kinds industrial waste, medical
waste, and activities waste. Industrial waste is the one dismissed by factories through the
acidification, alcalinization of poisonous subtances from these factories. This pollutes the land
and the water (for example, the waste of Vedan, the MSG company). Dust from cement
factories, exhauted fumes from automobiles impact people’s health directly. Medical wastes
originating from medical centers include medical bottles, test-tubes, injection needles, scalpels,
bandages, especially blood, patients’ egesta, medical radioactive subtances, drugs, knifes and
scissors using for HIV/AIDS patients or the ones having infection diseases. If these wastes are
not demolished, they will endanger the environment and our health. Daily lives wastes include
nilon bags, cans, redundant food of human or cattles, animals death bodies … Nilon bags
,especially, can not disintergrate and then pollute the environment. Thus, TCYTTG suggest using
paper bags instead of nilon bags to improve the environment. However, it is not easy to change
the habit of using nilon bags of people.

Solutions .
To prevent natural disasters and diseases due to climate change, there should be a cooperation
between countries all over the world about how to protect the environment – our common home.
In January, 2010 , the world conference about climate change has attracted many heads of states.
In the conference, solutions to reduce exhauted fumes, pollutants and to increase modern
disaster-warning devices, applications are discussed. Vietnam has a long beach and many
islands, so there should be cooperations between Vietnam and developed countries in the world
to predict disasters. Therefore, we can avoid risks in the open sea. Learing from the Haiti’s
calmity, it is high time construction contractors thought about how to prevent buildings from
earthquakes and other catastrophes created by climate change.