Caribbean health sector preps for climate change
THERE IS a move to build the capacity of Caribbean health sector to address climate risks to physical and mental health, as well as access to care.
The effort is embodied by the Caribbean Action Plan on Health and Climate Change, which was approved during the third Global Conference on Health and Climate Change, hosted in Grenada last year, and which focused on small island developing states (SIDS).
The plan has the endorsement of Caribbean ministers of health, and climate change, and aims to develop more climate-resilient health systems through the promotion of inter-sectoral ministerial mitigation actions in health together with enhanced awareness raising and the pursuit of funding to support countries in their efforts.
CLIMATE CHANGE DEATHS
The World Health Organization projected in 2014 some 250,000 more deaths per year globally due to climate-change impacts on nutrition and the increase in malaria, diarrhoeal and heatstress cases.
“Those figures would be much higher if they account for increased stress and declining well-being due to property damage, relocation and migration, loss of economic livelihood, damage to food and water resources, reduced provision of ecosystem services, and deterioration in sanitation and hygiene standards,” reveals the 2019 Caribbean Action Plan on Health and Climate Change.
“Climate change also affects health service delivery and healthcare access in SIDS, as most populations and healthcare facilities in these islands are near coastal areas prone to tropical cyclones, floods, storms, and disturbances in water supplies. Damage to infrastructure and essential supplies/ amenities affect the capacity of health systems to provide services when they are most needed in emergency situations,” it added.
The Emergency Events Database (2018) reveals that between 1966 and 2015, for example, there were 449 occurrences of storms, floods and drought in the Caribbean With devastating consequences to not only livelihoods, ecosystems and socio-economic development, but also health.
In furtherance of the plan, representatives from health ministries across the region, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and entities including the Green Climate Fund were brought together in Jamaica earlier this month to look at project concepts on health and climate change.
In a news release from day one of the event, PAHO notes that the meeting was hosted as a response “to the need to train health officials in the Caribbean on aspects of resource mobilisation for health adaptation to climate change”.
Speaking at the two-day meeting, Marcelo Korc, chief of the Climate Change and Environmental Determinants of Health Unit at PAHO, said “it is vital that climate change funds are channelled to ensure that the health sector is better able to cope with increased climate-change events”.
Johanna Wegerdt, health and well-being specialist for the GCF, which co-organised the meeting with PAHO, noted the training provided will enable Caribbean health systems to develop more ambitious projects and start to implement a “health-in-all projects approach.”
Meanwhile, strategic lines of action in the plan include empowering health leadership and strengthening institutional structures on climate change and health; and understanding the impacts on health, preparing health systems and building the investment case; in addition to effective implementation.