More than 200,000 lives have been lost to the “silent killer” of heat in Europe since 2022, the World Health Organization has said, after a heatwave saw some countries record their highest-ever May temperatures.
“The impacts of climate change are a clear and present danger, and its most immediate and lethal manifestation is extreme heat,” said Hans Henri Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director, on Thursday.
“Heat is a silent killer, but it is not an inevitable one,” Kluge said at an event in Berlin to launch new guidelines on protecting lives from extreme heat.
Extreme heat affects especially the very old and the very young, and people with heart, kidney and other diseases by causing dehydration, heatstroke and exacerbating existing conditions.
Most of the 200,000 deaths were “entirely preventable”, Kluge said, and the number was “the tip of the iceberg, with millions more people being affected physically and mentally”.
Scientists say climate crisis is amplifying extremes, with weather events like heatwaves, droughts and floods becoming more intense and frequent.
Kluge said that Europe was “warming faster than any other continent”.
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