Responding to climate change in southern Africa: the role of research

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Abstract

Projections show that the effects of climate change in Africa will not be uniform over the region. The region is extremely vulnerable to climate change because of poverty, a high pre-existing disease burden, fragmented health services and water and food insecurity. Despite the consensus that locally relevant information is necessary to inform policy and practice related to climate change, very few studies assessing the association between climate change and health in southern Africa have been conducted. More comprehensive information is therefore urgently needed for the southern African region to estimate the health risks from projected future changes in climate.

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Workplace heat stress, health and productivity – an increasing challenge for low and middle-income countries during climate change

Tord Kjellstrom, Ingvar Holmér, Bruno Lemke (2009)

Background Global climate change is already increasing the average temperature and direct heat exposure in many places around the world. Objectives To assess the potential impact on occupational health and work capacity for people exposed at work to increasing heat due to climate change. Design A brief review of basic thermal physiology mechanisms, occupational heat exposure guidelines and heat exposure changes in selected cities. Results In countries with very hot seasons, workers are already affected by working environments hotter than that with which human physiological mechanisms can cope. To protect workers from excessive heat, a number of heat exposure indices have been developed. One that is commonly used in occupational health is the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT). We use WBGT to illustrate assessing the proportion of a working hour during which a worker can sustain work and the proportion of that same working hour that (s)he needs to rest to cool the body down and maintain core body temperature below 38°C. Using this proportion a ‘work capacity’ estimate was calculated for selected heat exposure levels and work intensity levels. The work capacity rapidly reduces as the WBGT exceeds 26–30°C and this can be used to estimate the impact of increasing heat exposure as a result of climate change in tropical countries. Conclusions One result of climate change is a reduced work capacity in heat-exposed jobs and greater difficulty in achieving economic and social development in the countries affected by this somewhat neglected impact of climate change.

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Comparative Risk Assessment of the Burden of Disease from Climate Change

Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Rosalie Woodruff (2006)

The World Health Organization has developed standardized comparative risk assessment methods for estimating aggregate disease burdens attributable to different risk factors. These have been applied to existing and new models for a range of climate-sensitive diseases in order to estimate the effect of global climate change on current disease burdens and likely proportional changes in the future. The comparative risk assessment approach has been used to assess the health consequences of climate change worldwide, to inform decisions on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, and in a regional assessment of the Oceania region in the Pacific Ocean to provide more location-specific information relevant to local mitigation and adaptation decisions. The approach places climate change within the same criteria for epidemiologic assessment as other health risks and accounts for the size of the burden of climate-sensitive diseases rather than just proportional change, which highlights the importance of small proportional changes in diseases such as diarrhea and malnutrition that cause a large burden. These exercises help clarify important knowledge gaps such as a relatively poor understanding of the role of nonclimatic factors (socioeconomic and other) that may modify future climatic influences and a lack of empiric evidence and methods for quantifying more complex climate–health relationships, which consequently are often excluded from consideration. These exercises highlight the need for risk assessment frameworks that make the best use of traditional epidemiologic methods and that also fully consider the specific characteristics of climate change. These include the long-term and uncertain nature of the exposure and the effects on multiple physical and biotic systems that have the potential for diverse and widespread effects, including high-impact events.

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Climate change and occupational safety and health: establishing a preliminary framework.

Frank P. Schulte, Heekyoung Chun (2009)

The relationship between global climate change and occupational safety and health has not been extensively characterized. To begin such an effort, it may be useful to develop a framework for identifying how climate change could affect the workplace; workers; and occupational morbidity, mortality, and injury. This article develops such a framework based on a review of the published scientific literature from 1988-2008 that includes climatic effects, their interaction with occupational hazards, and their manifestation in the working population. Seven categories of climate-related hazards are identified: (1) increased ambient temperature, (2) air pollution, (3) ultraviolet exposure, (4) extreme weather, (5) vector-borne diseases and expanded habitats, (6) industrial transitions and emerging industries; and (7) changes in the built environment. This review indicates that while climate change may result in increasing the prevalence, distribution, and severity of known occupational hazards, there is no evidence of unique or previously unknown hazards. However, such a possibility should not be excluded, since there is potential for interactions of known hazards and new conditions leading to new hazards and risks.

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Author and article information

Contributors

J Myers: Role: ND

T Young: Role: ND

M Galloway: Role: ND

P Manyike: Role: ND

T Tucker: Role: ND

Journal

Journal ID (publisher): samj

Title: SAMJ: South African Medical Journal

Abbreviated Title: SAMJ, S. Afr. med. j.

Publisher: Health and Medical Publishing Group (Cape Town )

ISSN: 2078-5135

Publication date (Print): November 2011

Volume: 101

Issue: 11

Pages: 820-822

Affiliations

[1 ] University of Cape Town South Africa

[2 ] University of Cape Town South Africa

[3 ] Strategic Evaluation, Advisory & Development Consulting, Cape Town

[4 ] Strategic Evaluation, Advisory & Development Consulting, Cape Town

[5 ] Strategic Evaluation, Advisory & Development Consulting, Cape Town

Article

Publisher ID: S0256-95742011001100022

SO-VID: 8db6bb4c-bf0f-4d9c-9e82-69097be7fbc3

License:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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SciELO South Africa

Self URI (journal page): http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_serial&pid=0256-9574&lng=en

Responding to climate change in southern Africa: the role of research

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SciELO South Africa

Most cited references 24

Workplace heat stress, health and productivity – an increasing challenge for low and middle-income countries during climate change

Comparative Risk Assessment of the Burden of Disease from Climate Change

Climate change and occupational safety and health: establishing a preliminary framework.

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