LYM Session - 15 November 2009

15 November 2009

Our last meeting started with Dr. Salah Soliman and Dr. Manal El Batran welcoming the attendees to the eighth lecture of the Climate Change series and welcoming our distinguished guest Dr. Madiha Khattab who gave the first presentation.

The first presentation was entitled “The Impact of Climate Change on Health“ by Dr. Madiha Khattab. She first gave a glance on the population pattern in Egypt and its distribution, each citizen’s share of natural resources like water and how it’s declining by time due to climate change in addition to other impacts on population like obligatory immigration that may arise due to the rise in sea level. She gave a brief idea about the United Nation’s millennium goals and what Egypt has achieved from them such as decreasing children and mothers’ deaths and inhibiting the spread of HIV disease. She also discussed the health impacts of climate change including direct impacts as cataract and temperature rise and indirect ones such as heart diseases and cancer. Finally, she showed the policies undertaken to limit these negative impacts including efforts to provide clean drinking water, limiting poverty, improving infrastructure and basic health services and most important increasing awareness on adjusting behavior. 

Then, we had a presentation about the same topic by Anas Mahrous, Ola Samir and Mohamed Rabei. They defined climate change, its negative impacts on health like spreading of mosquitoes and insects along with diseases that accompany them, the appearance of diseases that transfer from animals to humans and also the spread of diseases like diarrhea due to the decrease in pure water sources. They showed how human activities are increasing the problem of climate change and showed some pictures from Wadi ElAmar area; where the residents are surrounded by cement and petroleum factories which caused serious health problems to appear and they encouraged the attendees to take action and face such problems.