Putting Health At The Center Of The Climate Agenda

This is a pledge to prioritise human health in the fight against climate change and for countries to take action.

Air pollution alone kills an estimated 7 million people a year, the World Health Organization said. It announced an aggregated $1 billion for climate and health, enabled by a series of new financing commitments, including by the Green Climate Fund, the Asian Development Bank, Global Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation. A new set of principles for financing climate and health solutions is also being launched. These will set out a common understanding of what health investment and practice means.

In Uganda, delegates heard that climate change is expected to increase cases of diseases like malaria and Ebola. Malaria is already the leading cause of death, and health workers are seeing 100 patients each instead of 20. In Mozambique, Doctors Without Borders International said malaria was now all-year-round and the country was hit by ”cyclone after cyclone”. Rates of dengue were also “alarmingly high” across the Americas.

Rockefeller Foundation said it was committing $100 million to climate and health financing. The Green Climate Fund is preparing a significant proposal for a climate and health co-investment facility. It is also partnering with the Global Fund to drive action and investments in the global south. The Wellcome Trust said it would be spending £100 million this year on research to understand the effects of climate change on health and how to protect people.

Logistics specialists like DP World play an increasingly key role in the medicine supply chain and healthcare equity. We have long-standing relationships with leading pharma and healthcare manufacturers and are on hand to implement reliable infrastructure in new markets to ensure vital medicines get where they are needed fast. For example, using Blockchain technology, we can monitor temperature fluctuations and plan for interventions in the case of unnecessary delays.