On the occasion of World health day 2008, the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Europe has launched a new report “Protecting health in Europe from climate change” to show that global warming is having a profoundly negative effect on human health. The report focuses on the effects of changing weather and seasonal patterns on vector disease spread, food insecurity and increased health vulnerability in the wake of natural disasters or other dramatic weather events.

The report, which presents a summary of climate change health effects, aims to stimulate debate about this pressing issue and provide guidance on action needed by decision-makers to protect health from climate change.

According to the report the European Region will not be spared the consequences of climate change. Many countries have already suffered the devastating effects of heat-waves, floods, droughts and there is growing evidence that in our rapidly warming world such weather events will become more frequent, severely affecting human health and presenting a substantial burden to health systems.

This year will also see the launch of the 2008 WHO World Health Report. The new report, which is an updated version of an earlier study on health and climate change released back in 2003, adds new information from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments and from various scientific studies undertaken since then.

“Up until now people have seen the face of climate change as environmental destruction or biodiversity loss or how it affects animals,” said Carlos Corvalan, a WHO expert based in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. “But more and more, the evidence is pointing that it is affecting the human species as well.”

The World Health Report has been drafted as a wakeup call, to gather more public attention to ways climate change is affecting human health.

“We’re using the reports, using the evidence that we have today to say, ‘What should governments do, what can we compromise to start doing from today?’” said Corvalan. “Our organizations then start to bring the governments together to discuss action."