Health

On October 25 2022, UNICEF released a report titled "The Coldest Year of the Rest of Their Lives: Protecting Children from Escalating Impacts of Heatwaves".

Poor access to adequate and good quality sanitation and hygiene facilities can give rise to a number of water borne diseases in populations.

Dengue is witnessing an alarming rise in India in recent years and the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (2020) data shows a five fold increase in cases of dengue from 28,066 cases in 2010 to 157,315 cases in 2019.

Dengue and climate change

On the occasion of the third International Day of Clean Air for blue skies, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST), hosted an event to highlight the importance of building capacity in India for air quality management.

In recent years, the impact of the wastes discharged in the Bay of Bengal has been significant due to high effluent inflow from secured sources. It was observed that the heavy metal concentrations in the Bay coast sediments were considerately high and varied among sampling points.

Cholera outbreaks are frequent and steadily increasing in India, shows recent surveillance data.

Japanese encephalitis (JE) - a mosquito borne viral disease, is one of the important causes for childhood mortality in Asia. India has a high burden of the disease with 13.7 percent of 63, 854 acute encephalitis cases from 2010 to 2017 caused due to Japanese Encephalitis virus (JEV) leading to deaths in 17 percent of these cases with the north-east being a perennial hotspot for outbreaks.

Provision of safe drinking water continues to be a challenge in developing countries and microbial contamination of water can lead to a number of waterborne diseases. Studies in India show that access to tap water may not guarantee that it is safe to drink.

Non carcinogenic health effects of groundwater contamination are equally challenging as the carcinogenic risks.

The East Kolkata Wetlands, often referred to as the ‘Kidneys of East Kolkata’, are located on the eastern periphery of Kolkata Metropolitan area and cover 12,500 hectares of area.