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GENEVA, 4 June 2026 (The Geneva Learning Foundation) – The rainy season used to follow a pattern that everyone knew. From 2021 onwards, the heavy rains in November, December, and February stopped behaving as they used to. The Lubiji river overflowed for longer.
The only crossing to the maternity hospital, a pirogue, could not cross during the floods. Women in labour gave birth at home, with the risks of haemorrhage, post-partum infection, and death that come with that.
So the women of Ngandajika organised themselves.
“With the women’s group approach, we have set up a system of close monitoring through networking, which has enabled pregnant women from the age of 32 weeks to take a roundabout route to arrive at the maternity hospital in time for the assisted birth. Their stays were paid for by the women’s group solidarity fund.”
Victoire Odia, Nurse, Ngandajika territory, Lomami province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
This is a powerful, specific example of what local adaptation to the climate crisis looks like when it is measured in births, not in workshops.
Floods that come earlier, last longer, and arrive harder are the new normal in Ngandajika and other communities represented in the new insights report “Local action to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis on health”.
The women’s solidarity fund is one of 100 such accounts selected for publication in Teach to Reach 11: Local action to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis on health, Listening and Learning report 20, released today by The Geneva Learning Foundation.
Download this report now
The is the first of two insights reports, based on health worker responses to the impacts of climate change on health, that will be published in 2026 by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF).
The second will publish qualitative insights from the 2025 Global Climate Change and Health survey of more than 6,400 health and humanitarian workers in 128 countries.
📅 Join the live Launch Event with health workers on 4 June 2026
On 4 June 2026, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is hosting a livestreamed Launch Event to introduce the report.
The session is open to the public, free, and held in both English and French.
Join the French-language event. Did you miss the live event? Watch the recording in English or French.
Take the first peer learning course that helps you respond to climate change health impacts
Enroll now in the peer learning course based on the report: “CLIMATE-EN-004 Climate change is harming your community’s health: what you can do now”.
This course is also available in French.
Chat with the report
Have a conversation with the report. You type a question in plain language, for example “What did health workers in my country say about floods?” or “What are local solutions when the road is cut off?”, and the tool answers using only the content of this report. You do not need any technical skill or any prior experience with artificial intelligence to talk to the report.
How do we learn from health worker experiences?
Frontline health workers shared their experiences before, during, and after Teach to Reach 11, the global peer learning event held in December 2024. What is Teach to Reach?
They were asked simple questions.
What exactly happened?
What did you do?
How did you know it worked?
Did the community help, or make things harder?
They answered in writing, in the language they preferred, in English and in French.
The report is the synthesis of all those answers.
From the contributions submitted by the 24,610 health workers registered for the event from more than 70 countries, 100 detailed accounts were selected for full publication in the annex of the report, drawn from at least 19 countries, with the largest groups based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire.
The first purpose of this report is to give back to the health workers who shared what they know.
They shared their experiences to learn from each other.
This synthesis belongs to them first.
The second purpose is to make sure that national and global actors learn to see the value and significance of what frontline health workers know, because they are the ones who are there every day.
Health worker experiences represent a new kind of evidence that needs to inform urgent action.
What can we learn from what’s in this report?
When the storm destroyed the health centre, the community built a new one
Jean-Richard Mutombo is a programme officer working in Tshibuba, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In 2023, storms with violent winds destroyed the village health post, schools, homes, and plantations.
The nearest health facility is more than 10 kilometres away.
The community did not wait.
“Today, we have mobilised some resources from generous people living in the towns to build a health centre in the village of Tshibuba. Work has already started and the foundation stage will be completed in 10 days’ time. The local population is helping by collecting water, sand, and local labour.”
Jean-Richard Mutombo, Programme officer, Tshibuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A twin saved on a flooded road, and a neighbourhood that dug its own drainage
Geh Raphaela Agwa is a midwife at Bomaka Community in Buea, Cameroon.
A woman came to her clinic in labour after her waters had broken on a flooded road.
It was a twin pregnancy.
The second twin had a slowing heart rate.
The team operated in time.
The twin was saved.
Afterwards, they organised.
“The quarter heads realized that everything was slow when it rained that much. So everyone from each household was called upon to dig the gutters so that cars could move even though it rained heavily.”
Geh Raphaela Agwa, Midwife, Bomaka Community, Buea, Cameroon.
Daily surveillance instead of weekly: rewriting the protocol in practice
Konan Kouamé Georges is a public health medical doctor in the Yopougon Health District, in Ouest-Songon, Côte d’Ivoire.
In 2023, the rainy season behaved in a way current guidelines did not anticipate.
So he and his team rewrote the protocol in practice.
“The rainy season led us to observe a dengue epidemic in 2023. Epidemiological surveillance has been stepped up, with dengue and malaria rapid tests being carried out on suspected cases and data being transmitted on a daily basis instead of on a weekly basis.”
Konan Kouamé Georges, Public health medical doctor, Yopougon Health District, Ouest-Songon, Côte d’Ivoire.
Daily surveillance instead of weekly is a small change to read.
It is a large change to do.
It is the kind of change that conventional surveillance systems would take years to formally recommend, and it is exactly the sort of early warning signal that the dominant epistemology of global health is trained to dismiss as anecdotal.
3 key findings from this report
Three findings run across countries and disease areas.
1. Climate change is harming health.
The first finding is that climate change is making existing health problems worse, rather than producing new ones.
Malaria, cholera, malnutrition, diarrhoeal disease, mental ill-health, and lost access to care all appear more often, earlier in the season, or in places where they used to be rare.
Health workers are the first to see these shifts because they are the ones treating the patients.
2. Communities are self-organizing responses.
The second finding is that communities are not passive recipients of help.
They are already responding.
The report groups what they do into two families, with 17 distinct kinds of action documented across both.
- The first family is emergency response. It covers makeshift transport such as boats, pinasses, pirogues, motorbikes, and porters when roads are gone, mobile clinics and temporary health points on higher ground, integrated delivery of services that moves vaccines, malaria treatment, and cholera prevention together, mental health support during crisis, priority for pregnant women and other vulnerable groups, drones flying medicines to isolated facilities, telemedicine and mobile phones keeping a midwife on the line, disease prevention and health education such as water purification and hygiene messaging, collaborative responses across health system actors and NGOs, adaptation to extreme heat by rescheduling services and adapting facilities, and the dedication of health workers who walk for days when no other way exists.
- The second family is building resilience. It covers water security, community-level planning grounded in local knowledge, awareness of local vulnerabilities, cross-sector collaboration for preparedness, the central role of community health workers, and sensitive engagement with communities whose trust is hard won.
3. Those closest to the impacts of climate change on health are the least visible in the global research and policy conversation
The third finding is that the health workers and the communities closest to all of this are the least visible in the global research and policy conversation.
This report exists to narrow that gap.
Why this matters for global climate change and health policy now
This report supplies that evidence at a scale and geographic breadth that has not been previously available, contributing to the implementation science for planetary health that turns ground truth into action at global scale.
- The 2025 Lancet Countdown called climate change a defining threat to human health, and opened a new path to climate-resilient health systems that explicitly recognises the role of frontline knowledge.
- The Belém Health Action Plan adopted after COP30 placed adaptation and community resilience at the centre of the global response, in line with the broader shift in which development itself is being reframed as adaptation.
Both depend on knowing what is happening at community level, what is blocking action, and what local solutions already work.
About The Geneva Learning Foundation
The Geneva Learning Foundation is a Swiss nonprofit that connects more than 80,000 health and humanitarian workers across 137 countries through peer learning programmes designed for and with the frontline. Teach to Reach, its global peer learning platform, is celebrating its fifth anniversary in 2026. The Listening and Learning Reports are part of TGLF’s Insights mechanism, which turns the experiences and questions of network participants into evidence that informs practice and policy.
Grand Challenges Canada was a funding partner for Teach to Reach 11.
Media contact
Claude Cardot, Claude.cardot@learning.foundation +41 77 231 96 91
References
- The Geneva Learning Foundation. Teach to Reach 11: Local action to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis on health. Listening and Learning report 20. The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18246203
- La Fondation Apprendre Genève. Teach to Reach 11: Actions locales face à l’impact du changement climatique sur la santé. Rapport « Écouter pour Apprendre » n° 20. La Fondation Apprendre Genève, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19069576
- Sadki R. Teach to Reach 11. redasadki.me, 30 November 2024. https://redasadki.me/2024/11/30/teach-to-reach-11-2/
- Sadki R. Anecdote or lived experience: reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems. redasadki.me, 11 November 2024. https://redasadki.me/2024/11/11/anecdote-or-lived-experience-reimagining-knowledge-for-climate-resilient-health-systems/
- Sadki R. Climate change and health: what the Lancet Countdown says about the value and significance of local knowledge and action. redasadki.me, 29 October 2025. https://redasadki.me/2025/10/29/climate-change-and-health-what-the-lancet-countdown-says-about-the-value-and-significance-of-local-knowledge-and-action/
- Sadki R. How the Lancet Countdown illuminates a new path to climate-resilient health systems. redasadki.me, 29 October 2025. https://redasadki.me/2025/10/29/how-the-lancet-countdown-illuminates-a-new-path-to-climate-resilient-health-systems/
- Sadki R. Development is adaptation: Bill Gates’s shift is actually about linking climate change and health. redasadki.me, 30 October 2025. https://redasadki.me/2025/10/30/development-is-adaptation-bill-gatess-shift-is-actually-about-linking-climate-change-and-health/
- Sadki R. Climate change and health: a new peer learning programme by and for health workers from the most climate-vulnerable countries. redasadki.me, 23 July 2025. https://redasadki.me/2025/07/23/climate-change-and-health-a-new-peer-learning-programme-by-and-for-health-workers-from-the-most-climate-vulnerable-countries/
- Sadki R. Implementation science for planetary health: from ground truth to local action at global scale. redasadki.me, 17 December 2025. https://redasadki.me/2025/12/17/planetary-health-from-ground-truth-to-local-action-at-global-scale/
- Romanello, M., Walawender, M., Hsu, S.-C., Moskeland, A., Palmeiro-Silva, Y., Scamman, D., Smallcombe, J.W., Abdullah, S., Ades, M., Al-Maruf, A., et al. (2025). The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. The Lancet, S0140673625019191. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)01919-1.