Up to 10,000 people in the Asia-Pacific region could be dying each year as a result of factors associated with global warming such as severe weather and mosquito-borne disease, a World Health Organization expert said on Thursday.
Based on data gathered in 2000, the United Nations health agency estimates that changing weather patterns already have a substantial impact on people in the Western Pacific region, which includes most of North Asia, parts of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, according to Dr. Hitoshi Ogawa, WHO's regional environmental adviser.
'Roughly 10,000 people...are estimated to die due to various factors' resulting from climate change every year, Ogawa told AP during a break in a WHO conference in Noumea, New Caledonia. But, he warned, 'that number could increase' over the next 50 to 100 years.
Preliminary research suggests that rising global temperatures have already led to an increase in extreme weather patterns in the region, including cyclones, typhoons, droughts and floods, he said.
For example, the incidence of storms in the Western Pacific region had risen by about 2 percent from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, Ogawa said. "But the number of deaths due to various natural disasters - droughts, floods, storms - has increased (by) about 30 to 40 percent," he said.
Ogawa said it was not possible to pinpoint the exact reason for the rise in deaths, but said the region's increasingly aged population was more vulnerable to adverse weather conditions. Rising temperatures also may reduce water quality in some areas and lead to a rise in diseases spread by mosquitoes, which breed in stagnant water, Ogawa warned.
He said regional governments should step up measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but should also boost surveillance of climate change related illnesses.
"Of course we need to reduce the emissions," he said. "But in the meantime, knowing the increase in global temperature, we need to adapt ourselves or our way of living to...the changing climate (and) weather patterns."
On Wednesday, WHO member states in the region held a ministerial round table to discuss the need for improving the health response to natural disasters.