Nairobi, Nov 14: A warmer world already seems to
be producing a sicker world, international health experts
reported today.
"Climate affects some of the most important diseases
afflicting the world," said Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the
World Health Organisation. "The impacts may already be
significant."
Other specialists on a panel at the annual UN conference
on climate change cited upsurges in Kenya, China and Europe in
recent years of such diseases as malaria, heart ailments and
dengue fever.
"Climate change could overwhelm public health services,"
said Kristie l EBI, an American public health consultant to
the WHO.
The specialists laid out recent findings as the two-week
conference entered its final four days, grappling with
technical issues concerning operation of the Kyoto Protocol,
and trying to set a course for future controls on global
greenhouse-gas emissions.
Scientists attribute at least some of the past century's
0.6-degree-celsius rise in global temperatures to the
accumulation in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other
heat-trapping gases, by products of power plants, automobiles
and other fossil fuel-burning sources.
The Kyoto accord requires 35 industrial nations - not
including the united states, which rejects the pact - to
reduce such emissions by an average 5 per cent below 1990
levels by 2012.
Bureau Report
