Jacob Bell

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Country: USA
Background: Psychology
Research Project: Reviewing the health impacts of climate changes and relevant adaptation strategies: A discussion document for the Bangladesh health sector.

Anthropogenic climate change is projected to have negative global health impacts. These impacts will disproportionately occur in middle and low-income countries already vulnerable to the climate system. Even with such projections, large research gaps persist in the study of climate change and human health. Bangladesh deserves such research attention as it is vulnerable to both extreme climate events and climate factors such as precipitation. Despite global development successes, it also still suffers a large communicable disease burden. This document reviews the projected climate change health impacts in Bangladesh, with specific focus on health sector response. In the review of such topics, this document employed comprehensive literature reviews and qualitative assessment methodologies. Results are presented on relevant topics, including: Climate change projections for Bangladesh, Climate-sensitive health outcomes in Bangladesh, Evidence of climate-health linkages in Bangladesh, Climate change adaptation health interventions, and Evaluation measures for adaptation interventions. These results indicate that Bangladesh will likely experience increasing temperatures, precipitation, extreme climate events and sea-level rise under climate change, and that such climatic factors influence diarrhoeal illness, malnutrition, vector-borne diseases, and morbidity and mortality from disaster events. The Bangladesh health sector must therefore implement climate change adaptation interventions which tackle these health outcomes in their current and future manifestations. Such adaptation interventions not only reduce the harmful potential of climate change, but support broader goals of sustainable development in Bangladesh.

Keywords: Bangladesh, Climate Change, Health, Adaptation