25
Jan

The World Health Organization has called the climate crisis the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. The effects of climate change on human health are wide-ranging – from direct impacts of extreme weather such as hurricanes, drought, and heatwaves, to indirect effects like new and reemergent diseases, to third-order effects like mental stress and undernutrition due to crop failure. By 2030, the direct damage costs to health from climate change are estimated to be as high as US$4 billion annually. There is an urgent need for action on climate to protect and sustain human health, including a focus on health systems and health policies.

At the December 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), a group of more than 50 countries committed to develop climate-resilient and low-carbon health systems in response to growing evidence of the impact of climate change on people’s health. However, there is not yet a shared understanding of what this commitment means. There is no widely accepted definition of what constitutes a climate-resilient or a low-carbon health system. While national policy-makers recognize the challenge of climate change, they do not always know exactly what to do or how to do it. There is a need to support countries to better understand where to start and what to prioritize to ensure health systems and health policies are mitigating and adapting to the ongoing climate crisis.