A study has shown that the annual death rate of children under five years old in Africa could double to about 38,000 by 2049 compared with the decade 2005–2014, except efforts are made to cut rising carbon emissions.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals seek to end preventable deaths of children under five and reduce under-five mortality to “at least as low as 25 deaths per 1,000 live births” by 2030.
Published in Environmental Research Letters, the study predicts that keeping temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius through to 2050 as targeted by the Paris Agreement on climate change could prevent about 6,000 heat-related child deaths in Africa.
To undertake the study, researchers analysed under-five population data from WorldPop and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, and national data on death rates of children under five from UNICEF for the years 1995–2020.
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They estimated the number of child deaths through to 2050, using different climate change scenarios and found that heat-related child mortality in Africa rose to 11,000 deaths annually between 1995 and 2004, of which 5,000 were linked to the negative impacts of climate change, the study showed.
The study revealed that from 2011–2020-decade, heat-related deaths swelled from 8,000 to 19,000 per year. The researchers however said that the increase may have undermined gains made in other areas of child health and dented global development progress.
A co-author of the study and professor of atmospheric science at Leeds University in northern England, John Marsham said that climate change impacts, caused by human activities and population growth, outweigh results gained from improved healthcare and sanitation measures.
“Our results suggest that if climate change is not kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, rising temperatures would make meeting the SDG target increasingly difficult,” he said.
Speaking further, he said, “Our results highlight the urgent need for health policy to focus on heat-related child mortality, as our results show it is a serious present-day issue, which will only become more pressing as the climate warms,”.
He further stated that the estimates of future heat-related mortality include the assumption of significant population growth projected for Africa and declines in overall child mortality due to health improvements.
Story was adapted from Sci Dev Net.
