The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts an additional quarter of a million people will die every year from the years 2030 to 2050 due to the effects of global warming.

The agency, based in Geneva, reported this last September 22 in an update of climate mortality estimates.

Like Us on Facebook

They report that causes of death will shift in the future. Deaths from disease, malnutrition, and diarrheal disease will decline while those from mosquitoes, heat exposure, and others will rise in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition, WHO said the adverse health effects of climate change will be distributed unevenly within and between populations. The wealthier countries will generally be able to adapt better than poorer countries.

Even under optimistic scenarios of future socioeconomic development, the substantial adverse impacts of climate change will still be experienced, said WHO's latest Quantitative Risk Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Selected Causes of Death report.

Deaths from heat exposure, for example, will start welling up from 92,000 persons in the coming years, to a quarter of a million persons.

Jeremy Hess, a physician and epidemiologist at the Emory University, said these reports are a significant step towards "the global estimation of projected disease burden associated with climate change."

He cautioned, however, the morbidity estimates may not be accurate and may in fact be an underestimate as a number of client-health relationships are not measurable due to a lack of data.

While the WHO report focuses on health risks and their associated morbidity, the report authors noted that climate change may have some positive, albeit limited, effects on human health.

"There are likely to be reductions in cold-related mortality and morbidity in high-income populations," the report said.

TagsWHO, quarter of a million premature deaths, premature deaths