Transforming health care: Strategies to address impacts of climate change

This panel discussion will explore the intersection of climate change and health care. Learn how hospital systems around the world are combatting the threats of climate change, addressing the impact on patient care, and how technology is helping health systems drive sustainable and resilient health care through an innovative platform.

Panel speakers:
•John Mennel, Sustainability Offering Leader, Deloitte US
•Dr. Toseef Din, CEO, M.P. Shaw Kenya
•Prof. Nick Watts, MBBS, MA, BMedSci, FFPH Director, Centre for Sustainable Medicine, National University of Singapore
•Josh Karliner, Director of Global Partnerships Health Care without Harm

[OldScientist]

"Heat-attributable mortality fractions have declined over time in most countries owing to general improvements in health care systems, increasing prevalence of residential air conditioning, and behavioural changes. These factors, which determine the susceptibility of the population to heat, have predominated over the influence of temperature change." IPCC
"As regards disease, the Lancet's Countdown on Health and Climate Change (2019) shows Climate-related deaths are a small proportion of all-cause fatalities (1990–2017). That is based on data per IHME (2019), and between 1990 and 2017, the cumulative age-standardized death rate (ASDRs) from climate-sensitive diseases and events (CSDEs) dropped from 8.1% of the all-cause ASDR to 5.5%, while the age-standardized burden of disease, measured by disability-adjusted life years lost (DALYs) declined from 12.0% to 8.0% of all-cause age-standardized DALYs. Thus, the burdens of death and disease from CSDEs are small, and getting smaller.
However, the declines in death and disease rates from CSDEs since 1990 are only a small proportion of longer-term declines across the globe. In the USA, one of the few places with good long-term data, death rates from dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, other gastrointestinal diseases, and malaria – all water-related diseases and therefore, almost by definition, climate-sensitive declined 99–100% between 1900 and 1970.
We are solving our problems with CSDEs faster than we are solving our other health problems."
Indur M. Goklany
If you're worried about deaths due to climate, cold temperature events are the big killer, not heat. It is estimated that 5.1 million people annually die in association with non-optimal temperatures. 4.6 million are linked to the cold, so over 90% (Zhao et al, 2021). And it is worst in the warmer parts of the world. 98% of temperature related deaths in SubSaharan Africa are due to the cold. Temperature events may be linked to upto 10% of human deaths annually. In a warming world there will be less death.
There are over 5 million excess deaths per annum globally due to abnormal temperatures from the 2000-2019 study led Prof. Guo of Monash University. It found that over 90% of excess deaths were caused by excess COLD rather than excess heat. So, in a world with increasingly mild temperatures, there will be less excess death. Lives will be saved. Warming is good not bad.
A 2022 Lancet study reported 791 heat-related excess deaths and 60, 753 cold-related excess deaths in England and Wales each year during the years spanning 2000-2019. That’s an excess death ratio of about 85 to 1 for cold vs. hot temperatures.
Due to warmer urban temperatures, the number of premature cold-related excess deaths avoided averaged 447 per year from 1976-2019 in the city of London alone (Hajat et, 2024).