- Higher temperatures affect the capacity of health workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to an analysis from the Inter-American Development Bank.
- Heat exposure is reducing effective working time in health systems across Latin America and the Caribbean, equivalent to losing the annual workload of 10,000 doctors and 16,000 nurses across the region.
- Investing in cooling infrastructure and heat-responsive workforce planning is essential to protect the operational capacity of health systems.
Extreme heat is often discussed in terms of mortality, hospitalizations, or agricultural productivity. But higher temperatures also carry less visible economic costs, including a reduction in the number of hours people can safely and effectively work.
In the health sector, this matters. Heat exposure increases physiological strain and mental fatigue. With higher temperatures, workers experience slower reaction times, reduced concentration, and greater exhaustion. In practice, this translates into slower task completion, longer or more frequent breaks, and in some cases shortened working hours. Even in indoor service occupations, particularly in poorly cooled environments, productivity declines under high heat exposure.
Using internationally comparable estimates of heat-related labor capacity loss from the International Labour Organization (ILO), in this post we examine what current temperature levels imply for health workforce availability across 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Across the region, the median country loses about 1.4% of service-sector labor hours each year due to heat exposure, and the regional average is similar. But the distribution is wide. In the upper quartile of countries, losses exceed 2% annually. In the most exposed countries, they surpass 3% and reach as high as 3.8%.
These losses are not limited to short periods or a few places. They reflect a year-round reduction in the number of hours that can be worked safely and productively.
Importantly, these figures represent annual national averages. Heat exposure varies substantially across seasons and within countries. Losses intensify during hotter months, in high-temperature subnational regions, and during heat waves. National averages mask periods and locations where heat-related constraints may be significantly larger.
Across the 26 countries in our sample, current heat exposure is equivalent to the annual workload of approximately 10,000 doctors and 16,000 nurses.
The magnitude varies with country size. In Brazil, for example, a seemingly modest 0.8% loss of service-sector labor hours corresponds to the annual workload of nearly 4,000 doctors and more than 9,000 nurses. In Belize, the equivalent loss is smaller in absolute terms—fewer than 10 doctors and about 20 nurses—but proportionally important within a small health system.
These figures do not imply that workers disappear. Rather, they represent a reduction in effective workforce time. These are hours that cannot be fully utilized because of heat exposure.
We can look at the example of Belize to illustrate how this dynamic has evolved over time. Since 1990, the share of service-sector labor hours lost due to heat has steadily increased, from about 1.5% in the early 1990s to over 3% today. This pattern closely mirrors average temperatures, which increased by roughly 1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius over the same period.
Because the relationship between heat and labor productivity is non-linear, further temperature increases are likely to generate faster-growing productivity losses than those observed historically. Without adaptation, heat-related constraints on workforce capacity are therefore likely to intensify.
This analysis does not attempt to model behavioral responses or estimate downstream health impacts. It translates current temperature exposure into measurable working-time constraints. Yet even this narrow exercise reveals something important: higher temperatures affect the operational capacity of health systems.
Health workforce planning traditionally accounts for demographic change, epidemiological transitions, and fiscal constraints. It rarely accounts for temperature-related reductions in functional labor supply. But as this analysis shows, even modest percentage losses in working time translate into thousands of full-time equivalents lost across the region.
In systems already facing shortages of doctors and nurses, these losses compound existing pressures. They affect scheduling, waiting times, service continuity, and surge capacity during extreme events. And because heat exposure is uneven across space and season, its impacts are likely to be concentrated precisely where and when health systems are already most strained.
With higher temperatures, protecting the health workforce becomes a key aspect of health systems resilience. Investments in cooling infrastructure, resilient facility design, occupational safety standards, and heat-responsive workforce planning are not only matters of worker protection, but strategies to preserve service capacity.