By Samwel Doe Ouma@samweldoe
Experts have urged Journalists to position climate change as a public health crisis that needs to be integrated into existing health programs and policies.
Addressing the media in a breakfast meeting in Nairobi dubbed ‘enhancing public understanding of the health impacts of climate change in Kenya’ Prof William Ogara, Associate professor Department of Public health, pharmacology and toxicology, University of Nairobi, said that there is a growing body of research showing that climate change is contributing to a wide range of health risks.
He adds that through planetary health approach, which is a recent and growing concept, there is a need to enhance ecological and epidemiological research and bring together the climate and health communities to deliver the evidence and policy options to respond to the climate crisis.
“Climate change is already affecting vector borne disease transmission and spread and its impacts are likely to worsen,” he said adding, “in the face of ongoing climate change we must intensify efforts to prevent and control vector borne diseases.”
Potential effects of climate change on human health include higher rates of respiratory and heat-related illness, increased prevalence of vector-borne and waterborne diseases, food and water insecurity, and malnutrition.
He urged stakeholders to encourage integrated solutions to enable overlapping challenges, effective cross sector action plan and partnerships and ensuring policy coherence.
“Political will is critical, governments needs to embrace an interdisciplinary planetary health approach,” he said.
He emphasized that there is a relationship between climate change and vector borne diseases citing changing weather patterns creating conditions that facilitate alterations in the geographical range, seasonality and incidence of vector borne diseases in some regions for example the spread of malaria to highland areas in Kenya perceived before as a no malaria zone.
“Vector borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, schistomiasis, tick borne diseases, chikungunya, fellow fever and rift valley fever pose significant health impacts and are sensitive to a changing climatic conditions such as precipitation, temperatures, and humidity which exert a strong lifecycles of the vectors such as mosquitoes,” he said.
Eliya Zulu, executive director of African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) called for the use of evidence in transforming lives and actions in the continent.
Zulu said that there is urgent need to include health in climate change deliberations adding that climate change alters an extensive range of natural ecological and physical systems integral to earth’s life support system.
He noted that if not checked in time, climate change is likely to slow down efforts to attain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa.
While Dr Sophie Ngala, head of applied human nutrition in the department of food science nutrition and technology at the University of Nairobi said that climate change affects human nutrition as changes in temperature and rainfall patterns have direct implications of food shortages, nutrition quality of our food and affects what food is available at what price.
“Increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide affects our food by lowering nutrients in our food which can lead to malnutrition,” Dr Ngala said.
Climate change is slowly taking a deadly toll on human health, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates between 2030 and 2050 climate change is expected to cause approximately 250, 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrion, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress.
