Climate Change and Health

Abstract

Climate change is becoming an increasing threat and one of the biggest health challenges facing humanity. A very unfavorable impact on the most important health factors: food, air and water has already been observed. Prolonged heat waves with high temperatures, followed by storms, floods and droughts are the cause of the death of tens of thousands of people every year, while the existence of millions of people is threatened due to climate change. Diseases such as diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition, which are conditioned in a certain way by specific climatic conditions, already cause more than three million deaths per year. These numbers do not include the devastating indirect impact of climate, for example, on food crops and the availability of drinking water around the world. Climate change threatens to halt progress in the fight against poverty and widen the health gap between rich and poor. Human health must be at the center of the fight against climate change, and efforts to preserve health must be strengthened through the Millennium Development Goals. The territory of the Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also Southeastern Europe is under great pressure from climate change, where negative impacts have already been recorded.