The 2022 Pakistan Floods are a climate change disaster. Getting the governance of disaster and crisis management right is critical for relief, rehabilitation, and recovery and to prepare for future climate emergencies. This SSHAP brief highlight 5 actions to tackle bottlenecks and enable effective interventions.
Ethiopia is currently experiencing several intersecting humanitarian crises including conflict, climatic shocks, COVID-19, desert locust infestation and more, affecting nearly 30 million people. This brief outlines important contextual factors and social impacts of the Northern Ethiopian crisis and offers key considerations to improve the effectiveness of the humanitarian response.
The authors present current evidence on how climate change impacts on social and environmental determinants of health and the link between these determinants and the vulnerability of local communities. They outline proven community-based interventions that local populations in developing countries can scale-up and take ownership of in order to strengthen their resilience to climate-sensitive diseases and conditions.
The study examines the relationship between climatic factors and reported malaria cases using data from 12 districts in Uganda over the period 2000-2011. A panel dataset comprising temperature, temperature standard deviation; minimum humidity; maximum humidity; precipitation; precipitation standard deviation; malaria cases; health facilities; hospital beds; health workers; per capita health expenditure and gross domestic product per capita.
The Fixed Effects Model was found to be preferable. Health facilities, per capita GDP, the interaction of temperature and precipitation, the interaction of precipitation and variability in precipitation, maximum and minimum humidity have a significant positive effect on malaria cases. Hospital beds and health workers are significant and negatively related to malaria cases while per capita health expenditure, temperature, precipitation and variability in temperature have no effect
Climate change has major health implications for developing countries but the links are often not well understood. This report describes the current and predicted climate impacts on human health in southern Africa. It presents a view of existing health vulnerabilities to climate change, identifies risks, assesses possible future socioeconomic conditions in relation to future health risks and identifies priorities for action. Climate change affects health in southern Africa principally through the quality and adequacy of water supply, food insecurity, infections organisms and vectors and extreme weather events, largely in that descending order of impact and significance.
The prevalence of HIV/Aids increases the vulnerabilities of individuals and communities. Low levels of progress against the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including poor infrastructure, leaves health systems in southern Africa highly vulnerable and unprepared for the challenges of climate change. Nevertheless, southern African Development Community (SADC) ministers of health and environment are recognising the threats and have adopted a leadership position committing to addressing climate change,
Anthropogenic climate change and anticipated adverse effects on human health as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are taken as givens.
A conceptual model for thinking about the spectrum of climate-related health risks ranging from distal and infrastructural to proximal and behavioural and their relation to the burden of disease pattern typical of sub-Saharan Africa is provided. The model provides a tool for identifying modifiable risk factors with a view to future research, specifically into the performance of interventions to reduce the impact of climate change.
Agriculture and livestock are amongst the most climate sensitive economic sectors in the developing countries whilst the rural poor communities are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Climate change is real and is happening now. Current knowledge on the relationship between climate change effects and animal health is lacking particularly in East Africa despite of livestock agriculture being economically important in the region. Many related studies in the region have reported on the impacts of climate change on human health compared to animal health. This deficiency has created a knowledge gap which affects livestock management authorities and several development projects.This review paper describes the current knowledge in regards to potential impact of climate change and livestock infectious diseases in East Africa region.
A number of research reports and scholarly articles on climate change, animal diseases epidemiology were reviewed over a period of two months.
The Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to AdvanceClimate Change Adaptation(SREX) was commissioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)in response to a recognised need to provide specific advice on climate change, extreme weather and climate events(‘climate extremes’). The SREX report was written over two and a half years, compiled by220 expert authors, 19 review editors and taking account of almost 19,000 comments. It went through three rigorous drafting processes with expert and government review. The findings were approved by the world’s governments following a four-day meeting, where theSummary for Policy Makers was agreed. It thus provides the bestscientific assessment available to date. It comprises a policy summary released in November2011 and the full report released in March 2012 (available online at http://ipcc-wg2.gov/srex).This summary highlights the key findings of the SREX report from an African perspective,including an assessment of the science and the implications of this for society and sustainable development.
This working paper lays out the current state of knowledge regarding direct and indirect impacts of environmental factors on health across Africa. While there are many uncertainties in magnitudes of climate change, particularly with timing, the existing literature makes interesting observations about potential health impacts and the populations that could be most at risk.
The working paper presents the potential impacts climate change may have on human health and analyses the various direct and indirect impacts that climate change will have on African populations. Due to the emerging nature of the issue and literature, there are many gaps in knowledge on the impacts climate change will have on human health.
The interactions between health and climate change are clearly recognised; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change includes a chapter on health issues in all its publications.
But we still need to better understand all the possible impacts of climate change on health.
Climate change is projected to lead to warmer temperatures, especially in southern Africa, where the warming is predicted to be 2°C higher than the global increase. Given the high burden of disease already associated with environmental factors in this region, this temperature increase may lead to grave challenges for human health and quality of life. HIV/AIDS, poverty, food and water insecurity together with inequality and unemployment will further complicate the manner in which we will need to address the challenges of a changing climate.
The health impacts are direct, such as increased temperatures leading to heat exhaustion, and indirect, such as likely increases in infectious diseases from contaminated water and changes in the distribution and/or magnitude of vector-borne diseases. The most effective measures for adapting to climate change to ensure healthy populations are to implement basic public health systems and services.
Climate variability and change are exacerbating many current climate-sensitive health outcomes and have the potential to affect the ability of health system institutions and organizations to maintain or improve health burdens in the context of changing climate and development patterns.
Advancing management of these risks requires systems-based and holistic approaches to adaptation. Research and practice that crosses disciplinary boundaries are vital for supporting evidence-based policies and programmes to effectively and efficiently address the health risks of climate variability and change in the context of multi stressor environments.