The Lancet Countdown is an annual report tracking climate change and the impact it has on global human health.

It said that climate change is exacerbating food insecurity, health impacts from extreme heat, the risk of infectious disease outbreaks and life-threatening extreme weather events.

Furthermore, delay in the adoption of low-carbon energy sources has left households dependent on dirty fuels, vulnerable to energy poverty and exposed to dangerous levels of fuel-derived air pollution.

Governments continue to subsidise fossil fuels to a sum of hundreds of billions of dollars annually – sums that are often comparable to their total health budgets, the report found.

“The world faces a critical juncture,” it said. “A health-centred, aligned response to the compounding crises can still deliver a future where people can not only survive, but thrive.”

Last year, the International Energy Agency warned that the world’s pathway to reaching net-zero carbon by...