Health at COP29

Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis

Global health

Health workers are already being transformed by climate change. COP29 stakeholders can either support this transformation to strengthen health systems, or risk watching the health workforce collapse under mounting pressures. The World Health Organization’s “COP29 Special Report on Climate Change and Health: Health is the Argument for Climate Action“ highlights the health sector’s role in climate action. Health professionals are eyewitnesses and first responders to climate impacts on people and communities firsthand – from escalating respiratory diseases to spreading infections and increasing humanitarian disasters. The report positions health workers as “trusted members of society” who are “uniquely positioned” to champion climate action. The context is stark: WHO projects a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, with six million in climate-vulnerable sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, our communities and healthcare systems already bear the costs of climate change through increasing disease burdens and system strain. Health workers are responding, because …

World Health Summit World Health Organization Investment Round Climate change and health

World Health Summit: to rebuild trust in global health, invest in health workers as community leaders

Global health

Discussions at the World Health Summit in Berlin this week have rightly emphasized the role of health workers, especially those directly serving local communities. Health workers stand at the intersection of climate change and community health. They are first-hand eyewitnesses and the first line of defense against the impacts of climate on health. There is real horror in the climate impacts on health they describe. Read the Health Worker Eyewitness reports “Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action“ and “On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report”. There is also real hope in the local solutions and strategies they are already implementing to help communities survive such impacts, most often without support from their government or from the global community. There is no alternative to the health workforce as the ones most likely to drive effective adaptation …

77th World Health Assembly Climate and Health Resolution

How will we turn a climate change and health resolution at the World Health Assembly into local action?

Global health

This video was prepared by the World Health Organization with voices of health workers speaking at the Special Event “From community to planet” hosted by The Geneva Learning Foundation. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has developed a new model that could help address the urgent challenge of climate change impacts on health by empowering and connecting health workers who serve communities on the receiving end of those impacts. This model leverages TGLF’s track record of facilitating large-scale peer learning networks to generate locally-grounded evidence, elevate community voices, and drive policy change. A key strength of TGLF’s approach is its ability to rapidly connect diverse networks of health workers across geographic and health system boundaries. For example, in March 2020, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, TGLF worked with a group of 600 of its alumni – primarily government staff working in local communities of Africa, Asia, and …