One in five children today are exposed to twice as many days of extreme heat as their grandparents

Extreme heat particularly affects children, the elderly, the sick, pregnant women and people working outdoors, so rising temperatures in recent years have had a direct impact on their health.

A report released on Wednesday by UNICEF provides concrete numbers on rising temperatures, concluding that one in five children around the world are now exposed to twice as many days of extreme heat (defined as days above 35 degrees Celsius) as their grandparents were when they were children. Or in other words, 466 million children regularly face extreme heat. Many of them do not have the infrastructure or services at their disposal to make it more bearable or reduce its impact.

The report therefore compares climate data from the 1960s with those from 2020 to 2024 (also at the country level), confirming that in 16 countries, children now experience more than one month more extreme heat than they did last year in six years. In South Sudan, for example, this decade has seen an average of 165 days of extreme heat per year, compared to 110 in the 1960s, while in Paraguay it has dropped from 36 to 71 days.

Globally, children living in West and Central Africa are the most affected by extreme heat, with the most significant increase over the past decades. As a result, 123 million children in the region, or 39%, now experience temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius for more than a third of the year, or at least 95 days, on average. This is 212 days in Mali, 202 days in Niger, 198 days in Senegal and 195 days in Sudan. As for Latin America and the Caribbean, nearly 48 million children live in areas that experience twice as many days of extreme heat.

Also in Spain, the increase in heat days has resulted in 5.4 million children, or 72%, living in areas where the number of extreme heat days has doubled since the 1960s, according to UNICEF. The average duration of heat waves in my country has increased from 4.4 days to 5.5 days.

As stated in the statement, rising temperatures Katherine Russell UNICEF Executive Director, making “the hottest days of summer now seem normal”.

As the head of the UN children’s agency warned in a statement, ““Extreme heat is intensifying, disrupting children’s health, well-being and daily lives.”“They are not small adults, their bodies are more fragile,” because “they heat up faster and cool down slower,” he insisted.

More heat waves

The report emphasizes that extreme heat has a more worrying impact if it lasts longer. In this sense, the analysis shows that children are also facing more severe, longer and more frequent heat waves. In 100 countries, more than half of children are currently suffering from There are twice as many heat waves as there were 60 years agoIn the United States, 36 million children were exposed to twice as many heat waves as 60 years ago, and 5.7 million children were exposed to four times as many heat waves as in the 1960s.

“The problem with kids is that “Their temperature regulation is not as well-developed as it is in older people.”“, explained Pedro Gorrotxategi, president of the Atencin Primaria Children’s Association, in a telephone conversation (Active expiratory pressure) and doctors at the Pasai San Pedro Health Center in Guipúzcoa.

The pediatrician said that the most vulnerable to extreme heat are children under one year old, especially those under five: “You have to try to make sure they are not in the sun, put them in a hat, wear light-colored clothes, be well hydrated and try to avoid direct sunlight if they are going to go out,” the expert advised, who believes it is better not to put a hat on babies when going to the beach. “Those who are a little older, like 3, 4 or 5 years old, will want to go, in which case it is better for them to go in the first and last hours of the day and have adequate protection.”

He added that the most serious and rarest effect of the heat is “heat stroke, where the body temperature goes up to 39.5 degrees. Most commonly they are dehydrated and unwell from the heat.”

Even in Spain, says Pedro Gorrotxategi, there are homes without air conditioning. In these cases, fans, which are usually of low cost and energy consumption, can effectively lower the temperature of the room, as can the measures we take throughout our lives, such as ventilating the room first thing in the morning to renew the air, drawing the blinds when it is hot and paying close attention to the children.

Food safety

But the impact of extreme weather on children’s health goes beyond the direct health effects. The UNICEF report recalls that the consequences of extreme heat are multiplied because they affect food security, food contamination and water supply. In addition, their education is affected by the destruction of infrastructure, causing them to be displaced or change classes.

In addition to calling on governments to take steps to protect children’s health, such as training all health workers to detect and treat heat stroke, or training health and education facilities to withstand extreme heat, UNICEF is again asking governments to commit to ambitious emergency emissions cuts to try to limit the rise in temperatures.