ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Mushahidullah Khan has cautioned that Pakistan’s disease burden and its overall impact on socioeconomic development gains made in recent years will escalate. This, he added, would lead to rise in avoidable deaths in coming years because of the rapidly changing and erratic climate.

“Most of such deaths will be in urban areas like, among others, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar, where living standard and health quality of people are continuously falling, particularly increasing air and water pollution. Children and elderly people will be particularly at stake,” he said in a statement on Sunday.

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Primarily fuelled by increasing levels of carbon pollution, climate change poses a grave risk to the health and well-being of people, particularly in developing countries like Pakistan, right from aggravating the risk of asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses/allergies to changing the spread of certain vector-borne diseases including Malaria and Dengue fever.

“The human health will particularly suffer from increasing ground-level ozone, which is a key component of smog. As average earth temperatures continue to rise, the amount of ozone tends to increase. The ozone, which is associated with the increased risk of premature death in adults and diminished lung function, would also lead to increased hospital admissions and emergency room visits for asthma, particularly in children,” Mr Khan warned.

Although asthma occurs in almost all parts of the world regardless level of development, over 80 per cent of asthma-related deaths occur in low and middle-income countries like Pakistan, he pointed out.

He said scientists had already projected that ozone concentrations in most of the urban centres across the world would increase because of climate change.

He said that over 14 million of Pakistanis were living with asthma and expressed concern that the asthma cases were increasing by nearly 30 per cent every year.

The minister said that climate change had also caused rise in frost-free days and warmer air temperatures, as being witnessed in colder areas of the country, including Islamabad. These could, in turn, cause a greater production of plant-based allergens, he warned.

Referring to the studies conducted by the World Health Organisation on the impacts of climate change on human health, the minister said, “Pre-existing health conditions make older adults particularly vulnerable to the cardiac and respiratory impacts of air pollution. Higher rates of diabetes, obesity and asthma in some communities may place them at greater risk of climate-related health impacts.”

He said while no single step could reverse the effects of climate change “we have a moral obligation to future generations to leave them a planet that is not irrevocably polluted and damaged”.

The senator said that a steady and responsible action to cut carbon pollution, check environmental degradation, control air and water pollution and ensure proper waste management could help protect people’s health and slow the effects of climate change. But achieving this is not possible without brining positive changes in our living standards, which are major cause for environmental degradation and unsustainable use of depleting natural resources, he cautioned.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2015

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