医学英语教程-生物医学：Unit 6 Gender Climate and Health.docxVIP

Unit 6 Gender, Climate, and Health Part I. Background information: Women, young and adolescent girls and children are the worst affected due to water logging etc. Wells, kitchens, firewood and other essential items and commodities have been damaged. Toilets have been inundated and damaged; there is no private dry space where they can release themselves during day light. The women make boats of banana trees, plastic, paper and palm Women, manage the food and water needs of the family, with various mechanisms to survive the difficult conditions. Families, who generally take 3 meals of rice a day, change the composition of the meals to reduce the rice consumption; millet, corn and other cheaper and less favorable food grains are introduced to substitute rice. As drought advances, the numbers of meals taken for a day is reduced, in order to preserve the available food grains. ‘Rice Seettu’ is organized by women in the drought affected villages as a common practice, to avoid the risk of starvation of the family. ‘Seettu’ is informal savings and credit activity. Fetching Water A bucketful of 20 liter water weighs 20 kg; carrying it, say 2 – 5 km, is a physically demanding task. Women living in drought prone areas will have to toil harder and travel longer distances. This will have adverse effect on their health which, in turn, will deteriorate their reproductive health with further negative consequences. Studies indicate that women in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, spend 40 billion hours per year collecting water – equivalent to a year’s worth of labor by the entire workforce in France. The 2003 European heatwave 2003年欧洲夏季热浪 the hottest summer on record in Europe since at least 1540. led to health crises in several countries and combined with drought to create a crop shortfall in Southern Europe. More than 40,000 Europeans died as a result of the heat wave. France was hit especially hard. The Chicago events of July 1995 1995年芝加哥7月热浪 It led to approxim