Source: Africa Publicity
Over 47, 000 Europeans died from heat-related causes in 2023, according to a new report by Nature Medicine.
The report said the number of persons dead could have been higher.
According to the report, without heat adaptation measures over the past two decades, the death toll for Europeans experiencing the same temperatures at the start of the 21st century could have been 80% higher.
It said for individuals over 80 years old, the death toll could have doubled.
The report revealed that some of the heat adaptation measures include advances in health care, widespread air-conditioning, and improved public information that kept people indoors and hydrated amid extreme temperatures.
The lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Elisa Gallo, stated that “We need to consider climate change as a health issue,” adding that “We still have thousands of deaths caused by heat every year, so we still have to work a lot and have to work faster.”
The study used publicly available death records from 35 countries in Europe, provided by Eurostat. Eurostat is the statistics office of the European Union, representing about 543 million Europeans.
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