Australia's Aborigines Will Feel Global Warming Most

"Australia's Aborigines will feel the impact of climate warming more than other Australians, with their remote outback homes and generally poor health making them particularly vulnerable, a report said Tuesday.

With temperatures in the tropical north and interior tipped to rise by three degrees Celsius by 2050, worsening already searing summer heat, the government needs to urgently improve aboriginal health and housing, researchers wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia.

"Elevated temperatures and increases in hot spells are expected to be a major problem for indigenous health in remote areas, where cardiovascular and respiratory disease are more prevalent and there are many elderly people with inadequate facilities to cope with the increased heat stress," they wrote.

Australia's 460,000 Aborigines make up about 2 percent of the population. They suffer higher rates of unemployment, substance abuse and domestic violence, and have a life expectancy 17 years shorter than other Australians.

The authors of the report said climate change would likely bring increasing rates of cardiovascular and respiratory disease to Aborigines, and create ideal breeding conditions for mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever.

Other diseases such as bacterial diarrhoea, common in hot, dry areas like Australia's desert interior and north, could rise by 18 percent among aboriginal communities, they said."

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Reuters