The SPHERA consortium, which brings together scientists from across Europe, published a forum on Thursday, November 28 to request funds for research into the effects of climate change on health from the European Commission, reports France Inter, which was able to consult the document. For 2025, “The European Commission has proposed a budget of around €970 million for health research – however, alarmingly, no money is allocated for research into the health effects of climate change“, note the researchers. “This must change“, they assert.
For these scientists, “funding research on the climate-health nexus is crucial to preserving public health and guaranteeing the resilience of our societies“.Recent floods in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Poland and Central Europe show”the urgency of taking into account the impacts of climate change on human health“, according to them. They recall that summer heat caused around 70,000 deaths in 2022 and 47,000 in 2023 and that, since the heatwave of 2003, extreme climatic events have caused more than 570,000 deaths on the planet.
“It’s a cry of alarm“, explains one of the signatories, Robert Barouki, biochemist at Inserm, to France Inter. “It is clear that whatever we do, we will have an increase in temperature“, hence the importance of “understand the impact on health” pour “allow us to better prepare“, underlines the French researcher. “We know, for example, that there is a whole series of infections, whose vector is the mosquito, which will develop, but are there other types of infections which will occur?“, he asks. “Is there an impact on the pulmonary system because of the heat from the ozone which will increase?“, he continues.
“Research needs a lot of funding and Europe is the place where we can currently finance this kind of large programs“, SO “it is important to emphasize the impact of climate change on health which requires research” pour “possibly prepare a therapeutic approach“, says Robert Barouki.
