Everything is interconnected: the problems, the solutions and us

 

1. Well-being societies are healthy societies.
2. The climate crisis is a health crisis.
   1. Burning fossil fuels causes air pollution, which kills 13 people every minute due to lung cancer, heart disease and stroke.
   2. Over 90% of people breathe unhealthy air resulting from burning of fossil fuels. Air pollution impacts our health and the health of the planet.
   3. Nine out of 10 people breathe polluted air, which kills 7 million people every year.
   4. Frequent floods and extreme rainfall resulting from climate change cause drownings, injuries, heart attacks, trauma and infectious diseases.
   5. Frequent droughts and wildfires caused by climate change result in suffocation, burns, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, trauma, and mental health problems.
   6. Rising temperatures due to climate change cause headaches, confusion, tiredness and vomiting. Extreme heat can cause organ failure and even death.
3. Climate change is having stronger and longer-lasting impacts on people’s mental health and psychosocial well-being.
4. The climate crisis is driving deadly heatwaves, floods, malnutrition and infectious diseases. Dengue cases reported to WHO have increased over 8-fold in the last 20 years, to over 5 million cases annually. Climate change may put more than 2 billion additional people at risk of dengue infection.
5. Three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet, while our agriculture and food systems drive biodiversity loss, contribute 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and account for 80% of freshwater consumption.
6. Polluted water and inadequate sanitation kill 829 000 people from diarrhoeal disease every year.
7. Two billion people globally lack safe drinking-water. Protect water sources by preventing sewage, waste and pollutants from entering our lakes, rivers and groundwater.
8. Globally, 3.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation, causing human waste to return to the environment untreated, making people sick and degrading ecosystems.
9. About 1.8 billion people use health-care facilities that lack basic water services, and 800 million use facilities with no toilets.
   1. Globally, 1 in 4 health-care facilities lacks basic water services.
   2. One in 3 lacks what is needed to clean hands at the point of care.
   3. One in 10 has no sanitation services.
   4. One in 3 lacks a system to segregate waste.
10. Planet Earth is another victim of the tobacco epidemic. Keep our lungs and the environment free from tobacco, and push the tobacco industry to clean up its pollution!
    1. Manufacturing, marketing and consumption of tobacco causes widespread environmental degradation.
    2. Cigarette butts are the most abundant form of plastic waste in the world, resulting in 767 000 kilograms of toxic trash each year – the equivalent in weight to 27 875 humpback whales.
    3. Six hundred million trees are chopped down to make 6 trillion cigarettes every year.
    4. Four and a half trillion cigarettes litter our cities, parks, beaches and waterways, polluting both land and water.
11. Unsafely managed health-care waste poses many risks to health workers and the nearby community, including risk of needlestick injuries, transmission of infectious diseases (such as hepatitis B and C), and inhalation of carcinogenic dioxins and furans from burning plastic health-care waste.
12. Keep fossil fuels in the ground for a healthy planet and a healthy me.
13. Stop killing me, stop killing my planet.
14. Antibiotics and other antimicrobials given to humans, animals and plants are entering the environment and our drinking water as waste and sewage, spreading drug-resistant organisms and antibiotic resistance. This is causing a rise in the emergence of so-called superbugs that are resistant to several types of antimicrobial drugs. Stop antibiotic waste from polluting the environment.
15. Protect our planet and our health. There is no Planet B.
    1. Our planet, our health: clean our air, water and food.
    2. Our planet, our health: reimagine our economy, society and health.