More than 1,700 people have died in Spain and Portugal due to the current heat wave, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, Hans Kluge, said on Friday (22), as vast areas of the European region face high temperatures and forest fires.
“The heat kills. In recent decades, hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of extreme heat during prolonged heat waves, often with simultaneous wildfires,” Kluge said in a statement.
Climate change “is not new. Its consequences, however, are increasing season after season, year after year, with disastrous results,” Kluge said, noting that wildfires are now “even as far north as Scandinavia.”
Kluge stressed that this week’s events point once again to the “desperate need for pan-European action to effectively combat climate change, the far-reaching crisis of our time that threatens both individual health and the very existence of humanity.”
“For this to happen, governments must show political will and true leadership in implementing the global Paris Agreement on climate change, with collaboration replacing division and empty rhetoric.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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