With 6.5 million people in need of humanitarian aid, this year’s El Nino–induced drought constitutes the largest humanitarian emergency that Malawi has ever confronted.
It also brings the second consecutive harvest failure to this small, landlocked country, which has yet to recover from last year’s severe flooding. Inadequate governance has amplified the negative impacts of both, compounding natural disasters with political and economic malfeasance.
The humanitarian impact of the 2015-2016 El Niño remains deeply alarming, now affecting over 60 million people. Central America, East Africa (particularly Ethiopia), the Pacific and Southern Africa remain the most affected regions.
The El Niño phenomenon is now in decline, but projections indicate the situation will worsen throughout at least the end of the year, with food insecurity
caused primarily by drought not likely to peak before December. Therefore, the humanitarian impacts will last well into 2017.
This chapter summarizes what is known about the historical effects of climate extremes on human health. The following section describes studies of infectious diseases and climate extremes related to El Niño Southern Oscillation. The next considers the impacts of short-term extremes of temperature.
The final section contains a discussion of climate-related disasters.
