Kathmandu, March 31 

Climate change is having an adverse impact on public health in recent years, according to experts.

During a two-day National Conference ‘Climate change and Health’ organised by Nepal Health Research Council here, climate change and health experts highlighted the shift of vector-borne diseases to non-endemic areas.

As per the reports presented at the conference, rise in temperature by one degree Celsius increases 4.4 per cent cases of diarrhoea while one centimetre precipitation leads to 0.8 per cent increase in diarrhoeal diseases.

According to the survey of Central Bureau of Statistics on climate change and its health impacts, 19 per cent households suffer from vector-borne diseases and 21 per cent from water-borne diseases.

Dr MeghnathDhimal, a climate change and health expert, said climate change had adversely affected public health.

“Cases of mental health problem, diabetes, malnutrition, cancer, snake-bite, chikungunya, scrub typhus, leptospirosis and malaria are on the rise due to climate change,” he said, adding that concretes steps should be taken to control climate change.

Dr Mandira Lamichhane, said reproductive health of females had been badly affected by climate change.