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Extreme heat is putting pregnant women and newborns at increasing risk, United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell warned in a speech on Monday, while addressing the "pre-COP" summit in Nadi, Fiji, a city on the island of Viti Levu in the South Pacific.
Stiell cited a new survey showing that more than two-thirds of health professionals across five continents have seen complications caused by intense heat in the past five years. The survey covered 1,000 midwives and doctors in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil and Zimbabwe. The charitable foundation Wellcome commissioned it.
The survey found nearly all respondents had cared for mothers or babies suffering the effects of extreme heat. About a third said they had seen cases of low birth weight or restricted growth, feeding difficulties and dehydration or heat-related illness, which they believed resulted from extreme heat.
"Rising temperatures mean rising danger in pregnancy," Stiell said. He also stated that climate-driven extreme heat during pregnancy is increasingly linked to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight and maternal complications.
Stiell described pregnancy and birth as "a new fault line in the global climate crisis" that is potentially fatal.
Wellcome chairwoman Julia Gillard, a former Australian prime minister, said in a statement that mothers and babies face increasing risk as a result of climate change. "Extreme heat is an invisible killer, but pregnant women must not be invisible," Gillard said. She added that leaders must act.
Scientists say climate change is making extreme weather events more intense and causing heat records to fall more often. Around 33 countries, spanning from western Europe to the Sahel and Central America, recorded their hottest July since records began this year, according to an AFP analysis of data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Observatory.
The pre-COP31 summit is taking place in Fiji and the remote coral atoll Tuvalu. Pacific leaders see the meetings as a chance to draw attention to life on the frontline of climate change. The gatherings precede the larger U.N.-sponsored global climate summit, COP31, due to be held next month in Türkiye.
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