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UN climate chief cites survey of 1,000 clinicians to warn of heat danger in pregnancy
UN climate chief Simon Stiell will tell a pre-COP summit in Fiji that heat endangers pregnancy, citing a Wellcome survey of 1,000 midwives and doctors. The survey counts clinicians' impressions, so it can press the issue ahead of COP31 but cannot say how often heat causes harm.
The Scientist · Science desk
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What happened
- Respondents worked in the UK, Australia, India, Brazil and Zimbabwe, and the survey was commissioned by the Wellcome foundation.
- Around 33 countries recorded their hottest July on record this year, according to an AFP analysis of Copernicus data.
- The pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji and Tuvalu comes ahead of the full COP31 summit in Turkey next month.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Respondents judged cause case by case, so the figures cannot be converted into a risk per pregnancy, which is the number a maternal-health budget is built on.
- precedent With the UN's climate chief calling pregnancy a climate 'fault line', delegations at COP31 in Turkey now have high-level cover to raise maternal and newborn heat.
- contradiction Gillard says leaders 'have the evidence and solutions they need', but the survey her foundation commissioned measures impressions, so any estimate of effect size has to come from other research.
The headline figure counts clinicians, not patients. More than two-thirds of the 1,000 midwives and doctors surveyed said they had seen complications caused by intense heat in the past five years [2][3]. In headcount, that is more than about 667 people [1]. A survey built this way captures what a workforce reports. Turning it into a rate of harm per birth would require the number of deliveries those clinicians attended, plus a comparison with cooler periods or places.
The respondents judged cause themselves. About a third, roughly 333 people [2], reported low birth weight or restricted growth, feeding difficulties, and dehydration or heat-related illness resulting from what they believed was extreme heat [8]. A midwife who sees a small baby after a heatwave is making a causal judgement from one case. Gathered from clinicians in the UK, Australia, India, Brazil and Zimbabwe [3], those judgements are a reasonable early signal from the people who see the patients.
The two broad shares also measure different things. Nearly all respondents said they had cared for mothers or babies suffering the effects of extreme heat [7], a wider category than the complications that more than two-thirds reported [2].
Stiell's strongest line makes a claim of another kind. "Climate-driven extreme heat during pregnancy is increasingly linked to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight and maternal complications," he is expected to say, according to AFP's preview of the speech [5]. A link like that is an association measured across populations of births. The survey measures what clinicians believe they have seen. The two can point the same way, but only population data can say how large the effect is.
Heat records give the warning its timing. Around 33 countries recorded their hottest July on record this year, according to AFP analysis of data from the EU's Copernicus climate observatory [10]. Julia Gillard, the former Australian prime minister who chairs Wellcome, said in a statement: "Extreme heat is an invisible killer, but pregnant women must not be invisible." [9]
Stiell is speaking at the pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji and Tuvalu, the precursor to the full summit in Turkey next month [11]. He is expected to say that "pregnancy and birth are now a new fault line in the global climate crisis, and one which is potentially fatal." [6] AFP's account describes a speech at a preparatory meeting. It does not put maternal heat on the COP31 agenda or attach money to it [1][11]. In my view the survey is a fair reason to raise the question with negotiators and a weak basis for sizing a programme. Sizing one would take incidence figures from birth records.
What to watch
- Whether COP31 in Turkey next month carries maternal or newborn heat into negotiating text or a health-funding decision.
- Whether Wellcome publishes the full survey, with question wording and results broken out by country.
- Birth-record studies in the five survey countries that measure heat-linked rates of preterm birth and stillbirth.