The medical emergency caused by global warming makes tens of millions of patients

A new report indicates that the proportion of the world's population exposed to deaths and heat-related illnesses continues to grow due to man-made climate change.

"Climate change is a medical emergency," said Renee Salas, MD of Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the report published by the British medical journal. Lancet.

In 2017, an estimated 157 million more people were exposed to heatwaves worldwide compared to 2000, the report says. Last year, too, about 153 billion hours of work were lost worldwide due to heat, an increase of more than 62 billion hours since 2000.

"We are seeing an increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves," said report co-author Kristie Ebi of the University of Washington. "As our populations age and settle in cities with urban heat islands, we are seeing a significant increase in the number of people vulnerable to high temperatures."

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Bruce Lemke, a former physicist and lecturer in physiology at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, contributed to this report, focusing on the impacts of climate change on workers.

When looked at closely, New Zealand is pretty well placed in terms of the impact of climate change on people's ability to work, he said.

"New Zealand is not vulnerable at the moment, and for some industries, like forestry, it could be a risk because it's a bit warmer." But, being a rich country, New Zealand could take various measures, such as the use of air-conditioned tractors, to mitigate the effects of climate change on workers.

"It's not just what will affect us, but what will affect the world and future generations," Lemke said.

The most vulnerable countries were the hottest and poorest countries, such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Rising temperatures leading to more deaths have caused many problems for these areas.

As it became warmer and lost work hours increased, people in the most affected countries would migrate to richer and less hot places such as New Zealand, Europe and the United States. United States, he said.

Lemke is also involved in an article that comes out in the Lancet in a few months, examining the issue of survivability when temperatures rise. "There will be a number of places where it will be difficult to survive by 2085 – most of them are in the tropics," he said.

It was hard enough to survive outside in some countries, especially around the Persian Gulf, but these places were quite rich and people could spend a lot of their time in air-conditioned buildings.

the Lancet One report fears that the potential geographic reach of mosquitoes that can carry diseases such as dengue and zika increases dramatically with rising temperatures.

He also said that about 712 climate-related extreme events would be responsible for $ 326 billion in losses in 2017, nearly three times the losses of 2016.

Floods and extreme temperature events have become more extreme since 1990, but there has been no clear upward or downward trend in the lethality of these events, the report said.

"Governments and national health services are increasingly adapting to extreme weather events and climate change, with impressive results."

In an editorial accompanying the report, the Lancet warned that over the next decades, "heat stroke and extreme weather will have redefined the world's workforce and production in an incomparable way.Many cities will be uninhabitable and migration patterns will be well beyond levels already creating global pressure "

The report was written by experts from 27 leading academic institutions, the United Nations and intergovernmental agencies from all continents.

– Stuff, USA Today