US accepts 'climate change affects health'

The US has accepted that climate change affects human health, Italian Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin said at the G7 Summit of Health Ministers.

"We have reached a shared conclusion," Italian news agency ANSA cited Lorenzin as saying on Monday at the close of the summit, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We drew up a document which recalls the position of the US, which however accepted the impact of climate-related factors on human health."

This outcome is important because the US has decided to pull out of the 2016 Paris Agreement to curb climate change.

Italy-chaired two-day summit of Health Ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the US and Britain kicked off on Sunday in Milan.

The summit's focus was climate change and how increasingly frequent extreme events such as heat waves, drought, torrential rainfall and floods affect human beings and the animals on which many of us depend.

--IANS

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