Climate Change and Human Health: A Realistic Outlook from Indian Perspective

Climate change is not only significant and emerging universal environmental challenges and dangerous to public health, but also a threat for mankind now. This issue had its origin in the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992. Hence, it is finding an increasingly central position on the international agenda as evidenced by the Nobel Prize awarded to the former US Vice President, Al Gore, and a team of UN experts under the chairmanship of Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri (Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi) for their work on the subject. In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) focused on the need to protect health from the adverse effects of climate change. The World Health Day - 2008 theme "Protecting health from climate change" had raised the profile of health dangers posed by global climate variability and change. This issue was selected because overwhelming evidence shows that climate change presents growing threats to international public health security broadly.