Extreme heat putting pregnant women and newborns at risk, U.N. says

Nadi, Fiji – Extreme heat is putting pregnant mothers and their newborns at increasing risk, United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell is set to warn Monday.

Speaking at the “pre-COP” summit in the city of Nadi, Fiji, Stiell will cite a new survey showing that more than two thirds of health professionals across five continents had seen complications caused by intense heat in the past five years.

“Rising temperatures mean rising danger in pregnancy,” he is expected to say. “Climate-driven extreme heat during pregnancy is increasingly linked to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight and maternal complications.”

“The picture is clear and very disturbing: As extreme heat worsens, pregnancy and birth are now a new fault line in the global climate crisis, and one which is potentially fatal,” Stiell will say. “This fault line must not become another deep chasm of climate-driven suffering, inequality and injustice.”

Scientists warn that climate change is making extreme weather events more intense and resulting in heat records being broken more often.

Around 33 countries, spanning from western Europe to the Sahel and central America, recorded their hottest July since records began this year, according to an analysis of data from the European Union’s Copernicus climate observatory.

The survey of 1000 midwives and doctors in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil and Zimbabwe was commissioned by charitable foundation Wellcome.

Its chairwoman — Australian former Prime Minister Julia Gillard — said in a statement that mothers and babies are being put at increasing risk as a result of climate change.

“Extreme heat is an invisible killer, but pregnant women must not be invisible. Leaders have the evidence and solutions they need — now they must act,” Gillard said.

The survey found that nearly all midwives and doctors had cared for mothers or babies suffering the effects of extreme heat.

About a third of respondents said they had seen cases of low birth weight or restricted growth, feeding difficulties, and dehydration or heat-related illness, all resulting from what they believed was extreme heat.

Stiell is expected to tell pre-COP delegates that “pregnancy should be a time of hope.”

“But for millions, it is becoming a time of anxiety, as climate impacts fill everyday life with risk.”

The pre-COP31 summit in Fiji and the remote coral atoll Tuvalu is seen by Pacific leaders as a chance to draw attention to life on the front line of climate change.

They are a precursor to the larger U.N.-sponsored global climate summit — known as COP31 — to be held next month in Turkey.