EVER wondered why the world’s polar caps are melting? Did your heart melt when you saw a polar bear standing precariously atop a small chunk of ice that came from melted polar caps?
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), global warming is created with the burning of “fossil” fuels such as coal, crude oil and gas. Although these fuels answer the energy needs to produce light in our homes, run our cars and operate factories to produce our daily needs, it also fuels global warming by creating immense amounts of carbon dioxide emissions that are then trapped in the planet’s atmosphere, thus creating climate change. This means the more carbon dioxide in the air, the hotter the climate gets.
In her presentation during the “Stop COVID Deaths” webinar titled “Climate Change and post-Covid-19 Health Security” that was organized by the University of the Philippines and the UP Manila NIH National Telehealth Center together with the UP Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH), Dr. Susan Pineda Mercado, co-Chair of the National Panel of Technical Experts of the Philippine Climate Change Commission, said that fossil fuels create greenhouse gases that account for 80 percent of carbon dioxide leading to global warming and ocean acidification.
“The Philippines still has coal-fired plants though they should have been phased out completely. Currently, the greatest emitter of fossil fuels in the world is China and unless the bigger countries bring down their emissions, we all suffer. The bigger countries are the ones that have to cut down on their use of fossil fuels though that’s really very contentious,” she said.
Right now, Dr. Mercado said scientists are aiming for only a 1.5-degree Centigrade increase in temperature by 2030 but they themselves believe it’s not realistic with what’s happening today. They believe an increase of more than 1.5 degrees (some estimates peg it at four degrees) poses a scenario where only reptiles will be able to survive.
Climate Change: the impact on human health
SHE said that rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising sea levels and increasing carbon dioxide levels can result in air pollution, which increases the risk for asthma and cardiovascular disease, changes in vector ecology such as malaria, dengue, encephalitis, Hantavirus, Rift Valley fever, Lyme disease, Chikungunya, and West Nile Virus. Increasing allergens contribute to respiratory allergies and asthma, water quality impacts could result in cholera and other kinds of water-borne disease. Water and food supply impacts can lead to malnutrition and diarrhea, while environmental degradation can result in forced migration, civil conflict and mental health impact. Extreme heat causes heat-related illness and death, cardiovascular failure, and severe weather can lead to injuries, fatalities, and mental health impacts.
Slow-onset events—what to do next?
CLIMATE change, according to Dr. Mercado, will bring about what is called “Slow Onset Events” or SOEs, events that happen so slowly that are hardly noticeable. These include increasing temperature, “desertification” where fertile land becomes a desert due to climate change and other human activities, loss of biodiversity, land and forest degradation, glacial retreat, sea level rise, ocean acidification and salination, where salt water intrudes into ground water.
Climate change is said to be the greatest threat to public health, a threat seen as an existential one due to concerns where humanity’s survival hangs in the balance. Thus, Dr. Pineda pointed out that there should be substantial investments in public health, particularly in the areas of surveillance, laboratories, vaccine production, workforce development and emergency management.
Some of the constraints at the early onset of Covid-19, she noted, was slow testing. “We had only one bio-safety level laboratory 3. Testing was slow since we were not prepared for an outbreak. There was also no local Personal Protective Equipment [PPE] production so health workers got infected resulting to death, and that serious mistake where hospitals not geared up for infection control accepted Covid-19 patients.”
She reiterated the need to create a good laboratory and surveillance network, which is what many countries have done already, to test and determine if there is a new virus or if there are mutations happening that could impact the country’s control measures. “Creating a good laboratory and surveillance network should be made a part of an overall plan for pandemic preparedness by putting in the necessary investments,” Dr. Mercado emphasized.
She also pointed to having a body of technical experts who are highly skilled in surveillance, a body that is somewhat similar to the US Centers for Disease Control and Protection, our own Philippine CDC. “We have to purposely be better at surveillance and start looking at how we’re going to manage all infections in the country and not just Covid-19.”
Dr. Mercado also suggested the “repurposing” of the Quezon Institute, which used to be the center for tuberculosis, into a National Center for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, and to stockpile PPEs that can be given to health workers when they need it. Given the conditions of climate change, she said, another pandemic may hit the world again.
Many people, Dr. Mercado pointed out, don’t notice SOEs but they are slowly affecting people’s lives and they don’t seem to be acting as much as they should. “It’s happening so slowly that unless you step back, you don’t realize that the Earth is actually on fire or underwater in many places and you think it’s just something that happened to you today not realizing how widespread it is.”
Image credits: Benjavisa Ruangvaree | Dreamstime.com