KUWAIT: The Health Promotion Department at the Ministry of Health, represented by the National Committee to address the effects of climate change and environmental disasters, launched an awareness campaign on climate change on Thursday under the slogan “Climate Change: Strengthen Your Health.” The assistant undersecretary for Public Health Affairs and deputy chairman of the National Committee for Preparedness and Response to the Effects of Climate Change and Environmental Disasters, Dr Al-Munther Al-Hasawi, told the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) during the campaign that the Ministry is keen to prepare the health system so as to adapt and respond to climate changes.

The campaign aims to educate the community about the complications of high temperatures and how to avoid them and the need to act quickly in cases of heat stroke, heat stress, and other complications. He said that the Ministry is also keen to raise the level of community health awareness of this phenomenon through the work of the Health Promotion Department, explaining that climate change has many bad negative effects, including the constant increase in temperatures, dust storms, as well as heavy rainfall and sea level rise. These climate changes have health consequences such as sunburn, heat stress, muscle damage, and respiratory diseases associated with dust, and the issues will worsen if there are no actual measures to slow down the process of climate change.

KUWAIT: Participants are pictured during an awareness campaign on climate change. – KUNA photos

The director of the Health Promotion Department at the Ministry and member of the National Committee for Preparedness and Response to the Effects of Climate Change and Environmental Disasters, Dr Abeer Al-Bahwa, told KUNA that the committee, represented by the Health Promotion Department, launched this campaign to gather the most important parties. It has a role in improving the environment. The campaign coincides with the extreme rise in temperatures currently witnessed in Kuwait, so that the community will be made aware through printed awareness publications and awareness films in a simplified language of some of the dangers resulting from extreme heat. — KUNA