Potential Dermatological Effects of Climate Change in Africa

Climate change represents a major existential threat facing the global community, and it has already begun to affect human health in a multitude of ways. This article highlights and discusses the implications that climate change has already had and is expected to have for dermatologists. A number of conditions are affected by climate changes. The distribution and frequencies of infections have altered due to changes in the causative organisms. Inflammatory conditions like atopic dermatitis have been exacerbated and the raised temperatures will also worsen the effects of ultraviolet radiation. Extreme weather events that result from climate change are followed by an array of dermatologic conditions that may be unusual for the given location. Dermatologists should be prepared to manage these potentially unfamiliar dermatologic consequences of climate change.