World Medical Journals Call For Action on Climate Change As Health Issue

Leading medical, nursing and public health journals throughout the world published a joint editorial on September 5, 2021 calling for urgent action on climate change.  The editorial focused on rising health problems already being felt from rising global temperatures.

In the past 20 years, heat-related mortality among people over 65 years of age has increased by more than 50%. Higher temperatures have brought increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality. Harms disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including children, older populations, ethnic minorities, poorer communities, and those with underlying health problems.

The coordinated editorial, published in the U.S. by the New England Journal of Medicine and others, was targeted at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September and the subsequent COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, Scotland.

Read the editorial here.