An Indiana University graduate, Marie Altagrace Astride Nazaire has served as minister counselor for the permanent mission of Haiti to the United Nations since 2005. In addition to contributing to macroeconomic policy, Astride Nazaire participates in daily discussions regarding important issues such as climate change.
Much of the public discourse involving climate change focuses on the negative impact global warming has on the environment, but there is growing concern that it has a similar negative affect on public health. Following its 2015 Commission on Health and Climate Change that concluded climate change could threaten the past half-century of public health advances, the Lancet, a leading health research journal, released a subsequent study in 2017 that suggested negative impacts on public health could be much worse than expected.
Climate change exacerbates extreme weather events, and those natural disasters are typically linked to public health crises. For example, Hurricane Maria had a direct impact on the death of an estimated 64 individuals in Puerto Rico, but further reports suggested that a disruption of health care services led to an additional estimated 1,000 deaths. Consequently, residents of the island with chronic illnesses have seen their conditions worsen as a result of the increased strain on the health care system.
According to The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, pollution of water, air, and soil accounts for upwards of nine million deaths per year, and that figure is expected to rise with an increase in natural disasters.
