Climate change-driven heat making Mombasa and Nairobi residents sick

Unlike bears who hibernate in extremely frosty conditions –Joys Kimani prefers the cold to sweltering weather. “I thrive in the cold,” she tells theHealthy Nation.

Her aversive relationship with the heat is not because of mere preference, but because of the undesirable impact extreme heat has had on her health.

So bad is the situation that when she is house hunting, she looks for the coolest neighbourhood –like Limuru, on the outskirts of Nairobi city.

She started experiencing the symptoms in 2004 when she moved to Uganda for her A-level studies. At the time, she did not think it was a big problem. It was five years ago when she went to Watamu, located at Kenya’s North coast, when she got serious body reactions from the heat.

Since then, anytime the sun is out and scorches with elephantine rage, symptoms start kicking in.
“I usually get heat rashes, one that is so bad that it turns red and sore. When I sweat and the drip touches the rash, it becomes infectious. The heat also gives me migraines and blurred vision. My skin tightens when all these symptoms occur,” she explains.

The heat has made Joys adjust her wardrobe. Her clothes are mostly made of cotton because of the tolerance that material has when the sun is out. “My body reacts to other materials, and the worst is chiffon,” she says.

A day before speaking to Healthy Nation, she had visited a doctor in Uganda to seek a heat-related treatment. She was affected by the hot weather in Nairobi, a few days before she travelled to Kampala.

“I have never received a diagnosis per se, but every time I see a doctor and show them the rash, they always say that it is a heat rash related to the exposure to the sun,” Joys tells Healthy Nation.

Joys has since learnt to cope with the heat waves, and she says that it is something that everyone should do, even if the impact on their health is not dire just yet.

“Simple things like applying sunscreen, shielding yourself from the sun and wearing cotton clothes when it is hot,” she advises. The World Health Organization says that more people are now being affected by exposure to heat caused by climate change.

They explain that there are about three ways in which heat is stored in our bodies.

It could be the inability to eliminate internally generated heat from metabolic processes due to environmental heat stress like high temperature, high humidity, low wind, and high thermal radiation. The other way could be our clothing which creates a barrier to heat loss, or, an external heat gain from the environment.

The situation is not getting any better and every month since June 2023, a new record for the hottest month is broken –for 13 months in a row now, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

A new analysis conducted by Climate Central, an independent organisation that analyses reports on climate science, shows that climate change influenced a spike in temperatures in Nairobi and Mombasa to be five times higher than usual for 83 and 59 days respectively between June and August this year.

The analysis shows that these months were the hottest on record, so far. The analysts use the Climate Shift Index which is used by Climate Central to quantify the influence of climate change on daily temperatures.

“This analysis is focused on the average personal experience of unusually warm conditions that were very strongly influenced by climate change. To do this, we compute the average per capita exposure to CSI level 3 or higher for people in 22 major global regions and 218 countries, territories, or dependencies,” shows the report.

The report shows that other cities experiencing the most heat in Africa include; Lagos, Kampala, Lome, Alexandria, Addis Ababa and Libreville. In these cities, they had high temperatures three times likely to be linked to climate change, in at least 80 days.

Globally, their analysis shows that 1 in every four people had successive days from June through to August experiencing climate change-driven heat.

About half of the world’s population -4.1 billion people, were exposed when the numbers peaked on August 13, this year. Last year was declared the hottest ever, warmer than the pre-industrial period of between the years 1850 and 1900.

Scientists already predict that 2024 will be the hottest on record.
“Extreme heat is a growing health risk in our warming climate. It is among the deadliest weather-related hazards globally, but under-reporting in many regions limits understanding of the full scale of heat-related health impacts,” shows the report.

A 2018 study published in the journal Science Direct shows that the global distribution of research on heat waves and their impact on human health is not disproportionate, and the studies are mostly conducted in regions with high levels of resources and income.

Apart from what Joys experiences when there is extreme heat, the WHO says that there are different ways that people are exposed to the health effects of heat. “The body’s inability to regulate internal temperature and eliminate heat gain in such conditions increases the risk of heat exhaustion and heatstroke. The strain put on the body as it tries to cool itself also stresses the heart and kidneys,” explains WHO.

They add that heat extremes can exacerbate health risks from chronic conditions such as heart diseases, mental health, respiratory and diabetes related conditions. They can also cause acute kidney injury.

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