Events
INSIGHTS: Addressing Climate Change Threat to Public Health
The 23rd episode of insights webinar featured a very important conversation about climate change and its impact on public health. The webinar held in June hosted experts who have invested time and resources in creating awareness and implementing interventions to mitigate the impacts of climate change on public health.
Climate Change as described by panelists, is the significant changes in global temperature and weather patterns over time. This is primarily caused by human activities including deforestation, increase in livestock farming, the use of fertilizers that contain nitrogen, overfishing, industrialization and urbanization.
Concerns were also raised around burning of fossil fuel which releases greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, leading to global warming and this in turn. Panelists opined that the causes and impact of climate change are multifaceted as they affect both natural and human systems.
In the course of the webinar, emerging public health threats posed by climate change were also discussed to include air quality degradation, leading to increased incidence of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and food insecurity. This has escalated the rate of malnutrition and spread in diseases such as vector-born disease, water-borne disease, and food-borne disease, rise in temperature, extreme weather events like increasing occurrences of heat waves, hurricanes, drought, storms. These according to panelists can cause injuries, deaths, displacements of populations, and mental issues. Ultimately, they reiterated that climate change affects the basic needs of humans which are food, shelter and water.
Stakeholders implored government and communities to develop and implement Climate Adaptation Strategies and climate transformative leadership and governance. They suggested a climate smart workforce while asserting the need for a flexible, adaptable surveillance system. Experts similarly called for multi-sectoral partners like the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Emergency Management Agencies to come up with multi-hazard emergency response plans as part of remedies to the effect of changing climate. They urged that all these should be trickled down to the state level, community level, household level and individual level so that our environment can continue to serve us and the future generation.
Other recommendations include, integrated risk monitoring and early warning, health and climate research, climate resilience infrastructure technologies and supply chain, management of environmental determinants of health, climate informed health programming, climate related emergency preparedness and management.
Moderator
- Tijesu Ojumu – Communications Coordinator, eHealth Africa
Panelists
Temitayo Tella-Lah – Program Manager/Program Lead Climate Adaptation in Health, Food Security and Nutrition.
Zillah Waminaje – Digital and Public Health Consultant, Salient Advisory Canada.
Dr John Bosco Isunju – Senior Lecturer, Makerere University School of Public Health. Team Lead, Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment and Development of the Health Adaptation Plan.
