Wildfires as a Public Health Problem: a Setting for Nursing in Disasters

ABSTRACT

Climate change and global warming are phenomena that are progressively affecting the planet. Temperature changes bring about various threats in distinct sectors and environments of human society, among them, threats to health secondary to extreme temperatures and natural disasters. Thus, it is constituted as a global threat to biodiversity and the human population, given that it affects habitat conditions, as well as causes an increase in forest fires as consequence of increased temperatures and diminished precipitations. Forest fires have attracted attention not only because of their ecological and environmental consequences, but also in production and economic aspects and in relation with the health of people potentially exposed, given that these place populations at environmental risks, like fire, smoke, and others derived from the combustion of wood and chemical products that can be released.