UN Warns Extreme Heat Endangers Pregnant Women and Babies

NADI, Fiji. Extreme heat is putting pregnant mothers and their newborns at increasing risk, United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell will warn on Monday, telling delegates at a pre-COP summit in Nadi that pregnancy has become a new fault line in the global climate crisis. Stiell is expected to cite fresh survey data showing most maternity health workers have already seen heat damage pregnancy outcomes in the past five years, according to AFP reporting.

The survey, commissioned by the charitable foundation Wellcome, polled a thousand midwives and doctors across the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil, and Zimbabwe. More than two-thirds said they had seen complications caused by intense heat. Nearly all of them had cared for mothers or babies suffering the effects of extreme heat, and about a third reported seeing low birth weight or restricted growth, feeding difficulties, and dehydration or heat-related illness they attributed to the heat, the reporting says.

What health workers are seeing

"Rising temperatures mean rising danger in pregnancy," Stiell is expected to tell the summit. He will say that climate-driven extreme heat during pregnancy is increasingly tied to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight, and maternal complications. In prepared remarks, he calls the evidence "clear and very disturbing" and warns that pregnancy and birth now sit on a fault line of the crisis that is, in his words, potentially fatal.

He is also expected to frame the issue as one of fairness as much as medicine: "This fault line must not become another deep chasm of climate-driven suffering, inequality and injustice." The language lands ahead of formal negotiations where adaptation funding, not just emissions cuts, has been a running sore point between wealthy and vulnerable countries.

Wellcome chairwoman Julia Gillard, the former Australian prime minister, said in a statement that mothers and babies are being put at increasing risk as the climate changes. "Extreme heat is an invisible killer, but pregnant women must not be invisible," Gillard said. "Leaders have the evidence and solutions they need. Now they must act."

The science behind the warning

Research published this year backs the pattern. A study across 13 countries found that heat was behind an estimated 1.41 percent of all summer preterm births, roughly 855 extra premature births per million births. On days of extreme heat, the risk of preterm birth rose 3.8 percent. The researchers pointed to dehydration, reduced blood flow to the placenta, and inflammation as likely mechanisms, and noted that women with fewer resources face the greatest exposure because of outdoor work and lack of cooling. Young single mothers with less education appeared at higher risk, though some of those subgroup findings were not statistically significant.

The backdrop is a record-hot year. Around 33 countries, from western Europe to the Sahel and Central America, recorded their hottest July on record, according to AFP analysis of data from the European Union's Copernicus climate observatory. Scientists warn that climate change is making extreme weather events more intense, and that heat records are falling more often as the planet warms.

Why this lands at pre-COP

Stiell's choice of venue matters. Pre-COP summits set the tone before the main climate negotiations, where country blocs hash out positions they will defend in the formal talks. and Pacific nations have long pushed for health and adaptation to sit higher on the agenda, and health has historically been a minor note in talks dominated by energy and finance. By centering mothers and newborns, Stiell is pushing delegates to treat adaptation money for clinics, cooling, and maternal care as core climate business rather than an afterthought.

The story drew wide pickup: Arab News also carried the warning out of Nadi, underlining how quickly the maternal-health angle is traveling beyond climate desks. For delegates, the message from Stiell is blunt. Pregnancy should be a time of hope, he will tell them, and the decisions made in the negotiating rooms this year will decide how often that hope survives the heat.

Sources: AFP via Balita; Scoop/Arab News coverage.