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Build climate-resilient health systems
Climate change's implications for human health are many.
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Climate impact – A farmer takes a look at the condition of soil in his paddy field, which goes dry due to a long drought, in Cot Trieng village, Muara Satu, Lhokseumawe, Aceh, on Oct.16.
(Antara/Rahmad)
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limate change is happening. In recent years average temperatures across the globe have increased, with significant impact on humanity’s most precious resource — the environment. Water systems are being stressed. Food sources are being imperiled. And areas once safe for settlement are being threatened and erased.
The implications for human health are many. Climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as cyclones and floods, exacerbating almost all public health risks, from food-borne disease to malnutrition and heatstroke. It impacts the spread and abundance of disease-carrying vectors such as mosquitoes, threatening the re-emergence of once-prevalent illnesses, from scrub typhus to dengue.
And it can create a range of outcomes that compromise public health in one way or another: Rising sea levels or prolonged drought can displace communities; scarce resources can trigger instability and conflict; and a decline in agricultural output can aggravate and entrench poverty.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Southeast Asia Region is particularly vulnerable. In recent years the region’s 11 member countries — all of them low or middle-income — have faced public health challenges from diverse climate-associated events and processes, including glacial lake outburst floods, cyclones and rapidly eroding coastlines.
These and other phenomena are likely to be exacerbated as global temperatures rise. Economic losses associated with climate change, meanwhile, are already affecting the development aspirations of millions of people Region-wide, and with it their ability to secure health and wellbeing.
As the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize, health both determines and is determined by poverty and its attendant conditions.
Though the problem of halting and reversing climate change is bigger than any one country, mitigating its health-related impact is both possible and necessary for all.
