Water, Climate and Health

Water is essential to our health and well-being. Access to safe drinking water and sufficient water for agricultural purposes saves millions of lives world-wide. Climate, water, and health are also closely interlinked. The World Health Organization estimates that around 150,000 excess deaths are occurring in low-income countries each year due to impacts of climate change on crop failure and malnutrition, diarrhoeal diseases, malaria, and flooding. The majority of these effects are water-related. 

Climate change will increase problems with water scarcity or droughts and aggravate already severe health situations in vulnerable regions. Changes in water flows may cause leakages of soil and animal pathogens into water sources used for drinking or recreational purposes. Still-standing waters provide breeding sites for disease transmitting insects. Floods and landslides may cause deaths and injuries, damages to the built environment, leakages of toxic compounds, and epidemic outbreaks. Higher water temperatures may stimulate growth of certain pathogens and trigger toxic algal blooms.

This year’s Stockholm Water Prize winner Dr Rita Colwell proves there are still new water-health-climate linkages to be discovered. She found a new marine link to cholera epidemics, and that outbreaks can be triggered by warmer sea surface temperatures, heavy rain, and algal blooms.  We need to be aware of all those aspects when mitigating or adapting to climate change!  

 



by Elisabet Lindgren, MD, PhD
Senior advisor Climate change and health,
Division of Global Health, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden