Today is World Health Day

[Francesco Fiondella]

The theme of this year's World Health Day, is "protecting health from climate change". In support of this, the IRI helped convene more than 70 high level experts from public health agencies, private institutions and corporations to brainstorm ways to overcome the challenges climate change poses to global health. Participants recognized that the breadth and severity of these impacts remain largely unknown and understudied, and they proposed a number of possible actions to take.

The meeting was hosted by Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and was organized by The International Research Institute for Climate and Society and The Center for Global Health and Economic Development.

"What we are trying to do with the incredible leadership assembled here is talk about creating a more integrated and sustained intellectual agenda on the intersection of climate and health, and what this means for public policy, research, and adaptation strategies," Sachs said in his opening remarks.

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and current director of Realizing Rights, put forward the notion that climate change must be fundamentally understood as an ethical issue and that the need to address it presents a unique combination of ethical and practical challenges.

"Access to a functioning health system has been acknowledged as a fundamental human right," she said. "To guarantee this right, we must therefore be interested in how governments intervene in matters of health."

"I think one of the big gaps at the moment is particularly the poorest countries' capacity to address this issue. They're already struggling to strengthen their health systems, and they're going to be facing severe and complex challenges from climate change," she said.

Read the rest of the story on the IRI's features page.

[Dr.Arvind Mishra]

"Access to a functioning health system has been acknowledged as a fundamental human right,"
Quite right but health for all is still a dream insofar as third world countries are concerned.

[Francesco Fiondella]

Dr. Mishra, you are of course completely correct. And as far as we can tell, climate change and variability is only going to place additional burdens on the health care systems of these countries. As the PAHO representative the meeting said, the budgets for health ministries, at least in Latin America countries, has been shrinking relative to inflation and population. Not a good sign.