Impact of Extreme Weather Events on Small Island Nations in Pacific Ocean Region. (a student's work)

Background: Extreme weather events due to climate change have occurred more often and have had severe health-related and socio-economic impacts in recent years. There are numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean region which are in a high risk of being affected as well as they have many common features which constrain their ability to mitigate against or to adapt to current climate variability and future climate change. Therefore, some common protection means can be developed and implemented in order to eliminate or  at least to reduce negative health and economic outcomes of the climate change.

Aim: The main goal of the paper was to present ideas of protecting people’s health and well-being which are highly endangered by extreme weather events.

Methodology: The databases of PubMed, Scopus and MedLine via Ovid were searched in October 2010 for English articles published in the last five years and related to health impacts of climate change. Words used in the course of the search: extreme weather events, climate change, health impacts, adaptation and mitigation, Pacific Ocean Region.

Results: Possible ways of protecting people’s health include: development and implementation of “early-warning systems”, colleting epidemic data and screening for vector-borne diseases, development of governmental disaster preparedness plans, designing of “weatherproof” infrastructure, management of water demand and storage as well as water loss prevention, preparation of relocation plans and airlifting of paramedics, doctors and psychologists.

Conclusions: Health impacts of extreme weather events can be divided into certain categories. Therefore, creating Climate Change and Public Health Policy is a highly multidimensional task and it demands cooperation of the whole panel of experts from different fields so as to create suitable approaches of mitigation against health risks related to extreme weather events.