Climate change and diarrhoeal disease: Perspectives for development policies

This paper points to the key role of health in development
programmes and illustrates through diarrhoeal diseases as a
case example, how climate change can impose increasing
risks, which particularly will hit young children and the
poor. The increased incidence can both be expected to
emerge from higher temperatures and from more extreme
events in particularly flooding. The number of people
affected is by WHO projected to be approximately 700,000
dead and 22 mill disability adjusted life years in 2030
without climate change, so it is very important to initiate
climate change adaptation measures that can help to reduce
these risks. An attempt to start such a process i.e. has been
done by the Danish Overseas Development Assistance
Programme, Danida, which has conducted a climate
screening of programme activities in Bangladesh. The
paper presents a number of conclusions from this climate
screening related to climate proofing of Danida activities in
the water supply and sanitation sector.