Tiempo Climate Newswatch

A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO), Preventing Chronic Diseases, calls for a two per cent annual reduction in deaths due to chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke and cancer. "We can stop this global epidemic of chronic diseases if we take preventative action now," according to Robert Beaglehole, Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion director. "We estimate that 388 million people in the world are expected to die from chronic diseases... in the next 10 years, and everywhere the poor are the hardest hit."

The annual review, Environment Matters, from the World Bank was also released this past week. This year, it features health and the environment. Kerstin Leitner of the WHO writes that "climate change has begun to affect people’s health through changes in environmental factors: weather-related disasters, temperature extremes, changing habitats for disease vectors, and so on." The WHO has reported that the effects of climate change since the mid-1970s may have caused over 150,000 deaths in the year 2000. In his overview to the World Bank report, James Warren Evans, director of the World Bank Environment Department, identifies three challenges for the coming period: integrating environmental management in poverty reduction; bridging the global-national-local divides; and building on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

More information

• Sydney Morning Herald
• Guardian Unlimited

• Preventing Chronic Diseases, WHO
• Environment Matters 2005, World Bank
• Comment, Glen Barry

Hurricane Stan battered Central America and southern Mexico during the first week in October, bringing over five days of heavy rains to some areas. Guatemala was worst hit, with the official death toll topping 600 and many hundreds reported missing. There are fears that 1,400 people may have been lost in mudslides affecting two Guatemalan villages. Lives have also been lost or infrastructure damaged in southern Mexico, El Salvador, Belize, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Hurricane Stan reached Category One strength before making landfall on the Mexican coast, with winds at 130km/hour, but it is the flooding and landslides accompanying the storm that have had the major impact. "The emergency is bigger than the rescue capacity, we have floods everywhere, bridges about to collapse, landslides and dozens of roads blocked by mudslides," said a spokesman for the Salvadoran Red Cross.

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• BBC
• BBC
• CBC News
• Yahoo

• Relief Web
• On the Web

According to the Red Cross, tens of thousands who died in the Asian tsunami of December 2004 could have been saved had there been quicker warnings. A quarter of a million people died during natural disasters during 2004, of which 225,000 perished in the tsunami. The Red Cross also concludes that a lack of coordination during the early stages of the relief effort delayed aid and assistance.

In the World Disasters Report for 2004, the Red Cross also criticizes the international community for ignoring warnings that Niger faced food shortages during 2005. "There were enough early warning signs to say that the situation could be quite severe in 2005," said Hisham Kigali, head of disaster response. "What, as a humanitarian community, we didn't do well enough is give out enough repeated messages saying that, particularly to donors."

More information

• BBC
• Dispatch Online

• World Disasters Report 2004, Chapter Summaries, Red Cross