Climate Change and Health

I come from the southern most tip of India. As a child I grew up welcoming the monsoon rains on 1st of June and that is the day when the school reopens after summer vacation. We used to come back drenched on the first day! Now I find that the monsoon rains are not predictable at all - it is delayed, varies in intensity and time.

As a development professional working with farmers, I hear them say about long stretch of droughts in one part of India where as in another part it is the issue of floods. Then there again is the unpredictable nature of rains, variable temperature and humidity - all impacting on crops.

I hear fisher folk talking about the fishes like sardine moving to the northern coast of India as the sea surface temperature is affecting them.

Finally, I hear my fellow health professionals in my province talking about emergence and re-emergence of communicable diseases like malaria, chikungunya, dengue fever etc - mainly vector borne which were not heard about earlier. There are also new cases of heat strokes and similar events which were never heard in our part of the world.

So, this is climate change to me - how the changing patterns of weather, rainfall, humidity, temperature etc affects human and animal life.