Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Environment
Cardiovascular mortality during heat and cold events: determinants of regional vulnerability in Taiwan
  1. Pei-Chih Wu1,
  2. Chuan-Yao Lin2,
  3. Shih-Chun Lung2,
  4. How-Ran Guo3,
  5. Chang-Hung Chou4,
  6. Huey-Jen Su3
  1. 1Department of Occupational Safety and Health, Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC
  2. 2Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
  3. 3Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC
  4. 4Graduate Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC
  1. Correspondence to Professor Huey-Jen Su, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, 138 Sheng-Li Road, Tainan 70428, Taiwan, ROC; hjsu{at}mail.ncku.edu.tw

Abstract

Objectives To identify the vulnerable regions with underlying susceptibility and poor adaptive capability in response to cold and heat events in Taiwan, and to characterise the determinants associated with such an increasing risk to design better adaptive strategies in view of predicted weather changes in the future.

Methods The authors used spatial regression models to measure the relationships between the spatial characteristics of temperature, extracted factors from demographic and socio-economic parameters, and the mean cardiovascular mortality 2 weeks before and after cold or heat events from 1994 to 2003.

Results Metropolitan regions were found to have a substantially lower mortality than rural areas after cold and heat events. Events of cold, compared with heat, had greater impacts on the mortality ratio in most townships. A negative association was identified, using a spatial lag model, between the mortality after cold and heat events and urbanisation, and the availability of medical resources. A higher percentage of older people, vulnerable and aborigines might have contributed to the increasing vulnerability of townships during cold and heat events.

Conclusions These data, using an island-wide spatial analysis, suggest that urban areas have a greater adaptive capability than rural areas, plausibly because people in urban areas have a higher socio-economic status and more medical resources. Social inequality across urban and rural townships is apparent and developing customised adaptation programmes for vulnerable regions to cope with heat and cold event should be prioritised.

  • Temperature
  • mortality
  • cardiovascular diseases
  • socio-economic factors
  • vulnerability
  • cardiovascular
  • climate
  • mortality studies
  • environment

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Footnotes

  • Funding Taiwan National Science Council (NSC95-2625-Z006-018) grants have, in part, provided critical financial support to this study.

  • Competing interests None.

  • Patient consent Obtained.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.