Climate-Health Nexus: How Health Professionals & Health Institutions are green about their predicament!

Every year, climate change-related disasters kill millions of people globally. Some lose their lives to direct impacts of climate change, for example, floods, earthquakes, fires, disease outbreaks, and extreme temperatures, and others through exacerbations by climate change and related crises, for example, pollution and biodiversity loss. In brief, the current #ClimateCrisis is a #HealthCrisis!

In Uganda and other developing countries, when floods, earthquakes, and landslides hit, thousands of mothers, children, and the elderly (or the poor) are cut off from their basic health and education services. Children miss school or are washed away by floods.

Mothers deliver in unhealthy and risky situations, with some ending up with serious medical complications, including mortalities. Climate-related displacements or migrations are a complete domain of suffering! Displaced persons lose livelihoods and are exposed to various health risks, mostly mental (depression & anxiety) and reproductive or sexual-health challenges like rape, defilement, school dropout, and malnutrition. Human health is under attack!

Unfortunately, while it may now seem vivid and clear, the nexus between climate change and human health was not strongly on the radar of the UN, the World Health Organization, or global climate action efforts for a long time, until 2021, during the Glasgow Climate Change Conference (COP26).

Since then, the WHO, UN, and other global actors have embraced the fact that the climate crisis is a health crisis. Recent climate change conferences, for example, in Egypt (COP27), Dubai (COP28), and Azerbaijan (COP29), even produced dedicated policy texts to this cause. Great!

However, the fight is not good until the real practical stakeholders get engaged! Health workers and their patients, health facilities, health training institutions, and medical students need to be in the game, for they are the ones who are directly engaged with climate change hazards every day in every way.

When climate-induced outbreaks hit, when floods swallow up health facilities, when shortage of reliable energy becomes a reality for many of our hard-to-reach health centers, it is health workers in those terrible spots and their patients who feel the pinch! Sadly, most health workers have no idea of this new war! Almost all medical training courses or curricula do not have anything to say about climate change and health, nothing!

Nurses, doctors, laboratory technicians, pharmacists, midwives, surgeons, health science lecturers, and tutors have no idea how climate change is responsible for the hazards they experience in their work or how they could contribute to building climate-health resilience.

At #Miklah, we have a comprehensive solution. The short course below is just an introduction to the plan. Get started with us, register here: Have questions? Call/WhatsApp: +256779342057. Our short course is designed to equip health workers with knowledge and practical insights on:

– The link between climate change and public health

– Your personal and professional role in tackling climate-health issues

– Emerging global opportunities in the UN, WHO, and broader Climate-Health Movement