250,000 preventable deaths every year: why climate and health must be financed together
Climate change is not just an environmental emergency. It is a public health catastrophe, and is claiming lives every day.
According to the World Health Organization, climate change will cause 250,000 additional deaths every year between 2030 and 2050. These deaths will not be distributed evenly. They will occur where health systems are weaker and climatic impacts are resin through malnutrition, malaria, daily, respiratory failure and heat stress.
A new report by the European Investment Bank (EIB) underlines this toll increase. EIB developed a tool for the first child to quantify how climatic risks such as heat waves, floods and poor air quality will generate the demand for medical care in Europe. Their projections show a conservative average increase or 0.5% in the demand for care, which translates into more than 500 million days of additional hospital care and more than 100 million notitas from the Achross Europe emergency department by 2050.
But this is not just a European history.
In the United States, extreme climatic events and air pollution are already costing the health system more than $ 820 billion annually.
In India, it is projected that growing temperatures reduce outdoor labor productivity by 15% by 2050, which aggravates public health and economic stress.
Africa Africa, where the climate crisis hits stronger, more than 118 million people in poverty face increasing health risks related to heat, with the least access to care or resources to adapt.
And yet, the global health sector receives less than 1% of all finances of climatic adaptation.
This is not just supervision: it is a failure of global priorities. The estimated financing gap for health -related climatic adaptation varies from $ 8 billion to $ 17 billion, according to the UN environment program. Without closing this gap, health systems will have difficulty satisfying the growing demands, especially in vulnerable communities where climate change is accelerating inequality and suffering.
So what is the way forward?
We must transform medical care into a first -line respondent for climate resilience. This means:
Direct influence:
- Train health professionals to understand and manage the growing connections between the environment and the disease.
- Usket health professionals to educate their patients about these issues and all related steps of sustainability and resilience action.
Indirect influence and defense
- Ensure that climate adaptation funds directly support access to health, equity and preparation.
- Invest in intelligent climate health infrastructure clinicians that can withstand extreme heat, storms and floods.
- Expand the public health capacity to anticipate and respond to the outbreaks of diseases driven by the change of climatic conditions.
In my green doctor, we help clinics and health professionals to develop climate resilience from scratch. Through our proven practice management program and expert guidance, we show medical care providers how to reduce emissions, improve environmental practices and prepare for a hotter, wetter and more volatile world.
And perhaps the most important thing, we provide the information to the medical care community to educate their patients.
Because sustainable medical care is not optional, it is essential.
If we act now, we can avoid the results of the sausage. We can save millions of lives, especially the most vulnerable. But we must stop accelerating health as a after the climatic agenda. Climate adaptation without medical care is not an adaptation at all.
It is time to be bold on climate and health.
Sources
- World Health Organization. Climate Change and Health Information Sheet (2023). Link ↩
- European Investment Bank. Estimation of the impact of climate change on European medical care (2025). Link ↩
- NRDC/Consortium Medical Society. Inaction costs in weather and health in the United States (2022). ↩
- International Labor Organization. Working on a warmer planet (2019). Link ↩
- African Development Bank. Impacts of climate change in health in Africa (2023). ↩
- Alcayna et al. How many climate adaptation finances are directed to the health sector? Plos Global Public Health, 3 (6), 2023. Doi ↩ ↩ ↩
- United Nations Environment Program. Adaptation gap report (2023). Link ↩
