Climate change will worsen people's health and cause shortages of medicines

Extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and air pollution caused by wildfires will have a serious impact on public health, especially for vulnerable groups.

Climate change may lead to an increase in the prevalence of diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), asthma, end-stage renal disease and Alzheimer's disease. In addition, the demand for drugs to treat these diseases (metoprolol, albuterol, heparin, and donepezil, respectively) is also predicted to increase.

The researchers of RAND used system dynamics models to project future consumption of these drugs under different climate change scenarios.

Climate change may lead to an increase in demand for the CVD drug metoprolol across younger age groups because of higher CVD prevalence — but, under severe climate change scenarios, to a decrease in demand for metoprolol among older age groups because of higher mortality rates.

Demand for the asthma drug albuterol is likely to increase across most age groups because of a heightened prevalence of asthma.

Demand for the Alzheimer's disease drug donepezil is likely to increase among adults ages 55 and older.