Rome - Climate change poses a health threat in Europe and central Asia, especially among the poor, experts from the United Nations and the European Union's food safety watchdog said Tuesday.

The warning came in a statement from a seminar in Rome on the health effects of climate change on food, water safety and nutrition.

The seminar is part of events marking UN World Food Day on October 16 - which this year focuses on the impact of climate change and bio-energy production on global hunger - and was organized by the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

More than 60 million people live in "absolute poverty" in the eastern part of what the World Health Organization's denotes as its European Region which includes the Russia Federation and central Asian states such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

"Health systems (in the affected countries) should respond by helping to strengthen disease control and health protection," WHO Regional Director for Europe, Marc Danzon said.

"Action includes ensuring clean water and sanitation, safe and adequate food, disease surveillance and response and disaster preparedness," Danzon said.

Higher temperatures favour the growth of bacteria in food, and hot weather can prove refrigeration measures inadequate and promote the emergence of flies and other pests, while climate change may effect zoonoses (diseases transmitted between vertebrate animals and human beings), the WHO, FAO and EFSA said in the statement.

The Rome-based FAO celebrates World Food Day each year on October 16, the day on which the Organization was founded in 1945.

FAO estimates that some 920 million people in the world face hunger, including small-scale farmers, fishers and forest-dependent people.

The FAO Committee on World Food Security, with representatives from more than 100 countries and a number of civil society organizations, is slated to meet in Rome from October 14-17 to assess trends in the world food security and nutrition situation.

The wife of Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak, Suzanne, is scheduled as keynote speaker at the World Food Day Ceremony in Rome on October 16. (dpa)