The Need to Emphasize Health Care and Climate Change at Durban
At the heart of COP17 in Durban is how countries will respond to and cope with climate change. For the most part the discussions will centre on technological and economical policies and implications. However, the health care impacts of climate change tend be overlooked. The health care impacts of climate change do not receive as much attention because they are difficult to study and they also affect the most marginalized populations in developing countries. This semester, I’ve been able to learn first hand about the humanitarian consequences of climate change working with the Red Cross Red Crescent through the FES 850a International Organizations and Conferences course at Yale.
Through my collaboration with the Red Cross Red Crescent, I’ve appreciated how we are only starting to understand the how climate change will alter our ecological landscape, let alone how these changes will alter disease transmission. Dengue is a relevant case study in how climate change and human health are tightly linked. Worldwide, over 2.5 billion people are at risk of dengue, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes. Dengue is found in tropical and subtropical climates, in urban and semi-urban areas. It is found in over 100 countries. Climate change fluctuations such as rain, warmer weather, and water shortages will all change the prevalence of this disease and we will see dengue in new locations around the world. Climate change will place a greater burden on humanitarian agencies, such as the Red Cross Red Crescent, responding to dengue epidemics and they will require increased support to reach the most vulnerable populations worldwide.
More attentions needs to be focused on the health of planet and its citizens at Durban. We need to motivate stakeholders at Durban to work together to reduce the humanitarian consequences of climate change through commitments to progressive adaptation and mitigation climate policies.
2 Comments so far
Hi Sophia! I am very happy you will be tracking this issue at the negotiations – for two reasons. One, right after graduating from F&ES I moved to Puerto Rico to coordinate the Puerto Rico Climate Change Council and our first vulnerability assessment to climate change. A few of our members are assessing Puerto Rico’s vulnerability in terms of health. I’ll be sure to share your blog with them!
My second reason – at the beginning of October I contracted dengue fever. While dengue is not new to Puerto Rico (in fact the CDC Dengue Branch is based here) it definitely made me realize that I don’t want this virus moving into new areas. It’s terrible and not something to take lightly. They call it break bone fever for a reason! Already instances of dengue have been found in Florida and Texas and a dengue mosquito, A. Aegypti, was found in New York this year. Perhaps if the negotiators from developed, non-tropical countries knew how terrible some of these vector-borne diseases were firsthand they would be more willing to get down to business!
Keep up the great work Sophia!
Hi Kasey,
Thanks for sharing your professional and personal experience with dengue. It really is incredible how little attention such a prevalent disease gets in developed countries.
As part of our deliverables to RCRC, our team of five Yale students (Kanchan Shrestha, Vanessa Lamers, Sophia Colantonio and Lauren Graham) collaborated with a group game designers from Parsons The New School for Design (Mohini Dutta, Ben Norskov, Eulani Labay, Lien Tran and graduate Clay Ewing) to develop a game whose scope explored the relationship between health and climate change for the Red Cross Red Crescent.
This game was developed for use in the field to educate children about dengue risk factors and climate change. The game will be played at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011 to showcase innovative teaching tools in the field. Playing the game will allow children and policy makers alike to understand and engage on an emotional level with complex and abstract concepts of climate change and dengue transmission.
In the context of Durban, evoking emotional responses in delegates may serve an important role in influencing decision-making versus traditional staid technical reports that fail to leave lasting impressions. Therefore it is crucial that game translates the health care impacts of climate change into an easily understood experience. This experience should impart on the policy makers a sense of relevancy and urgency and in turn inspire policy makers to address these health care and climate change issues proactively in their negotiations regarding adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Let me know if you would like to find out more about our game.
Sophia