Climate change adversely impacts the lives and health of billions of people, and will increasingly do so over the next decades. Indeed, climate change affects the most basic health requirements: clean air, safe water, sufficient food and adequate shelter. It also poses new challenges to the control of infectious diseases, and gradually increases the pressure on the natural, economic and social systems that sustain health.

The health impacts of climate change may differ across populations, and are dependent on several factors such as existing vulnerability and adaptive capacity to changing meteorological conditions of these populations and the associated human and social consequences, as well as a myriad of other determinants that include capacities, available resources, and existing behaviours and attitudes of population groups.