Climate Change and Global Health

There is increasing understanding, globally, that climate change will have profound and mostly harmful effects on human health. This authoritative book brings together international experts to describe both direct (such as heat waves) and indirect (such as vector-borne disease incidence) impacts of climate change, set in a broad, international, economic, political and environmental context. This unique book also expands on these issues to address a third category of potential longer-term impacts on global health: famine, population dislocation, and conflict. This lively yet scholarly resource explores these issues fully, linking them to health in urban and rural settings in developed and developing countries. The book finishes with a practical discussion of action that health professionals can yet take. Now with added chapter updating key changes affecting climate change and health through 2015, culminating with UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon's comment "What was once unthinkable is now unstoppable." Climate change, now clearly worsening, is triggering a powerful social and technological response. Will this response be sufficient to avert its potentially catastrophic "tertiary" health effects?