2023-07-18 17:37:43
The Council of Ministers has approved the creation of the Health and Climate Change Observatory (OSCC) in order to create a culture of self-protection, especially among the most vulnerable people, in the face of meteorological phenomena -such as heat waves- and the effects of them in public health and in the National Health System.
The Health and Climate Change Observatory (OSCC) will be in charge of three main objectives: define the risks to people’s health associated with climate change, create an integrated warning and alert system for health threats derived from the climate, and promote a culture of self-protection in society, especially in the most vulnerable groups.
The Minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Teresa Riberahas assured EFE that the OSCC “will strengthen and improve early warning systems” so that all people can be prepared to face the impact of extreme weather events, which “are increasingly difficult to manage.”
“It is important to prepare and develop capacities with the involvement of the institutions, to ensure that these increasingly recurring heat waves do not claim new lives”, because in reality, “climate change kills”, as we are told. scientists remember, pointed out Ribera.
The Observatory is supported by three ministries: Science, provides knowledge and research from public and private centers; Health, its indicators will allow generating valid information on health conditions; Environment, provides climate policies and incorporation into the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC).
For the vice-president, this organization will increase the capacity for dissemination to citizens, “very important” when a heat wave occurs, although she has stressed that Europe, for example, is probably the safest continent from the point of view of ability to respond to extreme weather events such as extreme heat and cold.
He regretted that last week there were 3 days in which maximum records were set consecutively on a global scale and today all the temperature records in the Atlantic Ocean continue to be broken, data that, in his opinion, show to what extent in our day to day we live in a “different normality”.
He has opted to renounce that atypical “normality” that puts soil quality at risk, for the ability to ensure food and water, combat desertification and for the reduction of emissions, “one of the actions that we can do best, because still, and for a long time, we will suffer the effects of climate change”.
On this point, the minister, and number two for Madrid in the upcoming 23J elections, has expressed her concern about the existence of climate change denialist parties on the Spanish political scene.
It seems to me “irresponsible” to adopt that position, Ribera has influenced, to point out that the worst thing that can be done in the face of a danger is to “deny or ignore it” and has recalled that climate change is a great threat to people and ecosystems, but also for economic stability and the progress of economic sectors.
That is why -he continued- when the World Economic Forum, the World Bank and the multilateral institutions show that climate change is one of the great threats to world economic stability, it must be taken seriously.
“Some parties deny its existence by demagogy about it or prefer to look the other way because it bothers them, but the worst thing we can do is avoid the debate”, the minister concluded.
A man cools off in a fountain to relieve the high temperatures. EFE/Rooms
Climate change affects health
According to the document ‘Reports, Studies and Research 2013’, from the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, within the framework of the functions assigned to the Health and Climate Change Observatory, climate change can affect health directly or indirectly.
He points out that changes in temperature, rainfall, and extreme weather events have a direct influence, while they indirectly include the transmission of diseases, the availability of water and food, and air quality, which causes cardiorespiratory diseases.
In 2022, in Europe more than 61,000 people died prematurely from heat, according to a study published by Nature Medicine, coinciding with the first heat wave of that year in Spain.
According to these data, 11,324 people died in Spain last year due to heat, the country with the most deaths only after Italy (18,010), in a year in which temperature records were recorded throughout Europe, but which mainly affected the south. of the continent.
However, the study by the Ministry of Health indicates that it is estimated that in Europe there will be an increase of between 1 and 4 percent in mortality for each degree of temperature increase, which translates into an increase of more than 30,000 deaths per year in the 2030s and between 50,000 and 110,000 by the 2080s.
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