Adeosun Moses

Health entails the total wellbeing of the body. It ranges from the physical and clinical aspect, which entails disease conditions to mental health, to environmental health which explores the impact of climatic conditions, and the environment at large to ensure that an individual is really okay. This complete scope of health is the one that paints the fact that health roles are not limited to a particular sets of people, but it is an encompassing duty that involve ourselves and projects the subject of one health.

Environmental health is a science of human injury and illness prevention as well as well-being advancement. This study includes: identifying and analyzing environments and hazardous agents, while limiting exposures to other hazardous physical, chemical, and biological agents in elements that may affect health. Weather is the average measure of the sum total of parameters like rainfall, humidity, heat, sunshine and so on over a short period of time. According to climatic basis, the world is divided to be either the hot temperate or the cold tropics or the tropics. The climate becomes colder as we move towards the poles and hotter towards the equator.

Nigeria for example is of the temperate climatic zone having a relatively hot average temperature, but relative adjustment based on topography; like the mountainous Jos known to be cold. We are laced with two seasons; the rainy and the dry, or what we call the cold and hot.  However, in recent years, we have seen alterations which are not in pattern with the normal climatic structures, which are to be in existence in the country.  As reported by United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction the health implication of hot and humid weather – we have been faced with extremes of our weather conditions.

The extreme coldness of December last year and January this year bears a testimony, even couples complained that it was too cold for a weather for two. Then, there was a change in event as there was a sudden change of weather to the present extreme heat. It was also predicted that, there will be a more intense and frequent extreme weather conditions that will threaten our lives and health.

CAUSE AND EFFECTS OF WEATHER ALTERATIONS IN NIGERIA

As highlighted by the same paper, the major cause of weather alterations is not limited to Nigeria alone, it is the issue of Global Warming. Global Warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) and other air pollutants collected in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earth’s surface. Normally, this radiation would escape into space, but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter. This is what leads to extreme heat and poor air quality, increase complications from underlying heart and respiratory conditions like asthma, renal failure, and pre-term birth, and as temperatures rises. As life progresses, there will be more heat-related illness and deaths in both urban and rural areas. Also, the extreme heat helps pests and pathogens spread into new regions, so the extremely rampant insect rampage is an added ‘advantage’ that came along this heat.

SOLUTIONS

• Drink plenty of water, always stay hydrated.
• Wear clothes that gives room for ventilation.
• Stay in a highly ventilated place.
• Stop Global warming.

Global warming is caused by various factors, with air pollution being a chief of them; stop air pollution which further depletes the ozone layer protection which is the cause of global warming.