The World Health Organization, the World Meteorological Organization, UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund on Wednesday introduced the first set of priority indicators for tracking how heat affects pregnant women, newborns and children, KBC Digital reports. The framework is meant to help countries watch those health effects, prepare for them and respond faster as global temperatures climb.
The WHO said the tool is aimed at shielding groups it describes as among the least able to protect themselves from climate-related health threats.
Why it matters
The agencies point to a body of research showing that high heat can damage health at every stage from pregnancy through childhood. According to the WHO, heat exposure is linked to a 26 percent rise in the odds of a preterm birth.
The burden on the very young is also growing. Babies under one year old lived through 389 percent more heatwave days in 2024 than during the 1986–2005 reference period, the WHO said. Worldwide, roughly 1.5 billion children now face heatwaves that are arriving more often, lasting longer or hitting harder.
Bruce Gordon, acting director of the WHO's Department of Environment, Climate Change, One Health and Migration, said a warming planet is producing new health hazards, and that older people, pregnant women, newborns and children have the least ability to avoid them. He said health systems need data to recognize the problem and act, from shielding people during heatwaves to building climate risk into routine services.
What countries are asked to track
The report recommends that governments monitor preterm births, stillbirths, low birthweight, hypertension during pregnancy, child deaths and visits to health facilities when heat is extreme. Watching school attendance is also suggested as a way to see how heat disrupts children's daily lives.
The idea is to pair those health records with temperature and other heat-exposure readings. Doing so, according to the WHO, can help authorities spot unusual shifts in outcomes during hot spells, prompt closer investigation and support timely action.
Dr Pascale Allotey, director of the WHO's Department of Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing, said following health outcomes alongside heat exposure would let countries identify likely impacts and protect vulnerable groups. She said that what health systems do not count, they cannot respond to, and that tracking outcomes such as preterm birth, child deaths and illnesses, and facility visits next to heat data allows countries to act for women and children.
Such information can help health authorities get facilities ready for higher demand, sharpen warnings to pregnant women and families, pinpoint the communities most at risk and improve heat-health planning, the WHO said.
Calls for national heat-health plans
The WHO is urging every country to draw up and carry out heat-health action plans suited to local conditions. Those plans, it says, should account for the needs of pregnant women, newborns and children, reinforce early warning systems and set off action promptly when heat risks appear.
The guidance arrives as extreme heat becomes a routine part of a warming climate, which the WHO says makes stronger monitoring and response capacity a priority for governments.
The next test is uptake: whether countries adopt the indicators in the report and fold them into national heat-health planning.
