In recent years, multilateral voices have warned about the impact of global warming on core issues of human existence, such as access to water, food, education and health. The Pan American Health Organization, PAHO (2023) asserts that the climate change crisis exponentially increases public health problems. In this context, 250,000 additional deaths per year are projected worldwide for the coming decades.
In the same way, the direct effects of the climate crisis on health constitute an emergency for the prioritization of public policies in the region and the leadership of Latin American and Caribbean governments. Illnesses and deaths from extreme weather events threaten the health of the continent. Along these lines, according to PAHO, heat waves are generated more regularly and last longer, this is how they give rise to excess mortality and processes of greater exhaustion for the inhabitants of affected areas. Likewise, in this context, respiratory and circulatory diseases are aggravated, as well as health injuries due to storms, hurricanes, droughts, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, among other frequent phenomena of the current environmental crisis.
The climate change crisis increases public health problems
If we take into account that the World Health Organization, WHO (2020) establishes in the list of the ten main causes of death globally as the first five: ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular accidents, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, lung cancer, and lower respiratory tract infections, the public health management scenario faces a global challenge to guarantee the right to health, but with significant accuracy of the continent’s aging projection. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC, approximately 76 million people over the age of 60 live in the region, a scenario that will be subject to a large increase until reaching 147 million in the year 2037. This demographic change requires more investment in public health systems and social protection systems throughout the region, in addition to welfare reforms to face this change in a context of inequality that requires humanized social and economic decisions. In other words, the issues of people over 60 years of age must be part of economic planning, as well as the guarantee of their human rights, specifically the fundamental right to health, where mental and physical health require management and emerging planning.
Consequently, there is a direct connection of the effects of global warming on the health systems of the region where inequality in our continent becomes visible. PAHO (2022) affirms that 30% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean He lacks access to the health care he needs, due to both financial, geographic and socio-cultural barriers. While on average, the countries of the region invest 4.2% of the gross domestic product in health, that is, less than the minimum: the 6% recommended by the WHO.
It is evident that this threat of the impacts of climate change is a consequence of a series of irresponsibility in the development of civilizations. It is also the result of the impact of the distribution of power, the effect of inequality and the result of a dehumanized economic system. If we take the figures from ECLAC (2018), the population of Latin America and the Caribbean is approximately 652 million inhabitants, of which more than half, that is, 51%, are women. Of this population, 12% corresponds to adults over 60 years of age. In this line, the figure of the so-called head of household has grown in recent years, thus a high proportion of older people are located who continue to perform this function with a sustained increase in female heads. Detail that configures the challenge of facing gender inequality to the extent that it threatens the health and livelihoods of girls and women around the world.
*Researcher and Teacher, UTPL, Ecuador. Network of political scientists #NoSinMujeres.
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2023-04-30 06:56:10
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