Increasing heat in Kuwait may cause more death rate, says study

Thursday, August 11, 2022

The continued increase in heat in Kuwait may cause a long term effect in health and may increase the death rate in Kuwait, a study reported.

The study was conducted by Barrak Al-Ahmad from the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, College of Public Health, Kuwait University, titled ‘Climate change and health in Kuwait: temperature and mortality projections under different climatic scenarios’ in cooperation with Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera, Kai Chen, Eric Garshick, Aaron S Bernstein, Joel Schwartz and Petros Koutrakis. This study was supported by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Harvard Chan National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center for Environmental Health.

According to the study, Heat-related mortality for non-Kuwaiti migrant workers could increase by around 15 percent by the end of the century. For every 100 deaths in Kuwait, around 14 could be attributed to heat driven by climate change by the century’s end, it says.

According to the study, by mid-century, the average temperature in Kuwait is predicted to increase by 1.80 degrees C (SSP2-4.5) to 2.57 degrees C (SSP5-8.5), compared to a 2000–2009 baseline. By the end of the century, there could be an increase of up to 5.54 degrees C. In a moderate scenario, climate change would increase heat-related mortality by 5.1 percent (95 percent empirical confidence intervals: 0.8, 9.3) by end-century, whereas an extreme scenario increases heat-related mortality by 11.7 percent (2.7, 19.0), the study says.

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