Garnaut Climate Change Review: The Impacts of Climate Change on Three Health Outcomes: Temperature-Related Mortality and Hospitalisations, Salmonellosis and Other Bacterial Gastroenteritis, and Population at Risk From Dengue

Climate change will affect the health of Australians over this century in many ways. Some impacts will become evident before others. Some will occur via quite direct pathways (e.g. heatwaves and death); others will occur via indirect pathways entailing disturbances of natural ecological systems (e.g. mosquito population range and activity) or disruption to livelihoods and communities (e.g. mental health consequences of prolonged droughts and regional drying trends). Most health impacts will occur at different levels among regions and population sub-groups, reflecting the influence of environment, socioeconomic circumstances, infrastructural and institutional resources, and local preventive (adaptive) strategies on the patterns of disease. The likely health impacts are many and varied. The main health risks in Australia from climate change include: health impacts of weather disasters (floods, storms, cyclones, bushfires, etc.); health impacts of temperature extremes, including heatwaves; mosquito-borne infectious diseases (e.g. dengue fever, Ross River virus disease); food-borne infectious diseases (including those due to Salmonella, Campylobacter and many other microbes); water-borne infectious diseases, and other health risks from poor water quality; diminished food availability: yields, costs/affordability, nutritional consequences; increases in urban air pollution (e.g. ozone), and the interaction of this environmental health hazard with meteorological conditions; changes in aeroallergens (spores, pollens), potentially exacerbating asthma and other allergic respiratory diseases; mental health consequences of social, economic and demographic dislocations (e.g. in parts of rural Australia, and via disruptions to traditional ways of living in remote Indigenous communities) At this stage of research and understanding, and in context of available time and resources, it is only possible to include a minority of those anticipated health impacts in this quantitative modelling exercise