Identifying heat thresholds for South Africa towards the development of a heat-health warning system.

ABSTRACT: Exposure to heatwaves may result in adverse human health impacts. Heat alerts in South Africa are currently based on defined temperature-fixed threshold values for large towns and cities. However, heat-health warning systems (HHWS) should incorporate metrics that have been shown to be effective predictors of negative heat-related health outcomes. This study contributes to the development of a HHWS for South Africa that can potentially minimize heat-related mortality. Distributed lag nonlinear models (DLNM) were used to assess the association between maximum and minimum temperature and diurnal temperature range (DTR) and population-adjusted mortality during summer months, and the effects were presented as incidence rate ratios (IRR). District-level thresholds for the best predictor from the

SUBMITTER: Kapwata T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10794383 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature