The persistent heat exposure led to 470 billion potential labour hours lost globally in 2021, with potential income losses equivalent to 0·72 percent of the global economic output

The heat-related deaths for people older than 65 years increased by 68 percent between 2000–04 and 2017–21, says the 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change.

The study carried out by Lancet Countdown, an international, multidisciplinary collaboration, dedicated to monitoring the health fallout of climate change, provides an independent assessment of the delivery of commitments made by governments worldwide under the Paris Agreement.

It tracks 43 indicators across five key domains: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement.

The world, the report points out, confronts profound and concurrent systemic shocks while countries and health systems continue to contend with the health, social, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and persistent fossil fuel overdependence have pushed the world into an energy crisis, exacerbating the vulnerability of the world’s population to concurrent health threats, the report adds.

“Coastal waters are becoming more suitable for the transmission of Vibrio pathogens; the number of months suitable for malaria transmission increased by 31·3% in the highland areas of the Americas and 13·8% in the highland areas of Africa from 1951–60 to 2012–21, and the likelihood of dengue transmission rose by 12% in the same period,” the reports reveals. “The coexistence of dengue outbreaks with the COVID-19 pandemic led to aggravated pressure on health systems, misdiagnosis, and difficulties in management of both diseases in many regions of South America, Asia, and Africa.”

The persistent heat exposure led to 470 billion potential labour hours lost globally in 2021, with potential income losses equivalent to 0·72 percent of the global economic output, increasing to 5·6 percent of the GDP in low Human Development Index (HDI) countries, where workers are most vulnerable to the effects of financial fluctuations, the study found.

The extreme weather events caused damage worth US$253 billion in 2021, particularly burdening people in low HDI countries in which almost none of the losses were insured.

During 2021 and 2022, extreme weather events caused devastation across every continent further pressuring health services already grappling with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Floods in Australia, Brazil, China, western Europe, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, and South Sudan caused thousands of deaths, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and caused billions of dollars in economic losses,” the report reads.

India and Pakistan experienced a heatwave during March–April, 2022, which was 30 times more likely to have happened because of climate change.

“Despite widespread underreporting, 90 deaths were attributed to reduced wheat yields that have further worsened global shortages caused by the war in Ukraine,” the report highlights. “The full health impacts of the lost income, increased hospitalizations, and food and energy insecurity, in addition to the outburst flood of a glacial lake and forest fires, are not yet quantified.”