By Lynn Wilson

Climate change decisions are multinational, multicultural and interdisciplinary. Priority issues differ from one region to the next and between disciplinary focus areas. One common thread is the issue of human health. As our African partner Peters Omoragbon says, “It’s your health; it’s my health; it’s everybody’s health!”

International guidelines influencing climate decisions, whether ecological and physical, social and economic, or political all rely on aspects of health as measurements to assess policy efficacy. In addition, the critical roles of health workers including nurses and midwives in enabling countries to scale up health services and progress to achieve the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are well established.  However, the impact of inadequate health worker training hinders delivery of essential health services in 57 priority countries  with particularly serious impacts on maternal and child health.

Each defined area of climate change decision activity, from water to carbon, from Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) to sustainability, uses human health and well-being as a primary success indicator. Health not only crosses all sectors’ concerns but it encompasses all sectors.  Good health is an asset to global economies and allows nations to co-create new solutions for climate adaptation and mitigation.

UN officials warn that natural disasters will be more frequent in coming years. Degraded environmental, social and economic stresses are exacerbated by climate change and the attendant increases in weather-related events and natural disasters.  According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), earthquakes, floods, landslides, and extreme weather conditions made 2010 the deadliest year in the past twenty years. Some 373 natural disasters killed almost 300,000 people in 2010, affecting nearly 207 million others, and costing nearly US$110 billion in economic losses. The Interagency Working Group on Climate Change and Health points to the critical need to foster policy relevant and community accessible knowledge abut the  interactions among the climate, human and environmental systems and the societal responses to climate change.

Reported climate issues span the globe. The World Health Organization regional office for Europe highlights recent effects on human health from climate change: the 2003 European event during which it suffered its strongest heat-wave ever; the 2002 major floods killing 250 people and affected 1 million projected climate-related increases in floods, diseases (cases of salmonellosis rise by 5–10% for each 1 °C increase in weekly temperature, for ambient temperatures above about 5 °C. Lyme borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis have spread into higher latitudes, asthma and cardiac events); projected food productivity decreases in the Mediterranean, south-eastern Europe and central Asia worsening of malnutrition, especially among the rural populations.

While these figures in the developed world are noteworthy, the hardest hit areas are areas contributing the least to anthropogenic additions to climate change. Effects are already evident, for example, in countries throughout Africa. Historical climate records show that Africa has already experienced a warming of 0.7ºC, with earlier global models predicting a further increase at a rate of 0.2–0.5ºC per decade (IPCC, 2001) reached and escalating with unpredictable consequences.  A World Health Organization assessment, taking into account only a subset of the possible health impacts, concluded that the modest warming that has occurred since the 1970s was already causing over 140 000 excess deaths annually by the year 2004. Globally, the number of reported weather-related natural disasters has more than tripled since the 1960s. Every year, these disasters result in over 60 000 deaths, mainly in developing countries; the majority of these deaths are women and children, particularly in Africa. The major effects of climate change on human health are shown in documented increases of climate sensitive illnesses and diseases including diarrheal, cholera, malaria fever and other vector-borne diseases, air-borne diseases, respiratory and cardiac diseases etc.

Although Africa contributes ONLY about 4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emission, Africa is more vulnerable to the effect of climate change with a significantly higher impact on women than men.  Africa lacks sufficient financial and human resources to adapt to climate change and deal with localized extreme vulnerability. Since countries that contribute the most to the greenhouse gas emissions have both the financial and technological know-how to mitigate the effects of Climate Change and prepare for adaptation responses and risk prevention, Africa should explore every available means to benefit from this advancement.

The ability of health systems to respond effectively to direct and indirect health effects of climate change is a key global challenge, especially in developing countries and regions that experience less efficient and under-resourced health systems. In 2009, the Lancet reported that, “ Management of the health effects of climate change will require inputs from all sectors of government and civil society, collaboration between many academic disciplines, and new ways of international cooperation that have hitherto eluded us. Involvement of local communities in monitoring, discussing, advocating, and assisting with the process of adaptation will be crucial. ” And so it is.

These statistics are the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Effects in far away locations affect us all. In a mobile world, diseases travel quickly, water  and food scarcity are becoming global realities, and the pollutants in one country affect another region’s water, air, food supply and the health of its people.