section_path: Climate-related concerns/Health impacts
section_name: Health impacts
paragraph_text: Health impacts
  
  Local communities are suffering from food scarcity and malnutrition as well as an increasing risk to diseases such as malaria and dengue fever as temperatures rise and allow these diseases to migrate further north. There is also an increasing risk of water borne illnesses accompanied by an increasing lack of safe drinking water. Illness is not the only danger to the communities as temperatures sky rocket. With the climate changing weather patterns are also changing and more extreme weather events are occurring putting local communities more at risk to physical harm and death during erratic weather events. Marginalized groups including children and women are experiencing more severe impacts from climate change and are often more exposed to disease and injury. Over the last couple years these health impacts have gotten increasingly worse and more common. Recent studies have shown that dengue fever has had a consistent pattern of epidemic in Nepal in the years 2010, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 with the largest in terms of severity occurring in 2022. 54,784 reported cases were recorded from all 77 districts in seven provinces. These diseases are simply in addition to other diseases that can be seen with the rise of global temperatures and air pollution. Many vulnerable groups are experiencing an increase in respiratory illness, cardiac illnesses, and asthma. The heat can lead to issues such as a strain on respiratory illnesses, heat stroke, and fever. There is also the increased risk of cancer. Many lower income communities such as the himalayan villages suffer from exposure to more pollution or in some cases exposure to toxic chemicals which has led to an increased rate of cancer in these communities as well as an increased risk of death.