Commonwealth Health Ministries are under pressure from the rise in climate-related diseases

Climate change is now the biggest concern facing health ministers in Commonwealth countries, the organisation’s secretary general has warned.

Patricia Scotland said it is a reality of today rather than a problem of the future, with consequences such as heat stress and an increase in insect-borne diseases that are particularly acute in smaller states.

“If you look at what’s happening in terms of zoonotic diseases, if you look at what’s changing in terms of malaria, a lot of dengue fever, chikungunya – this all has to do with climate,” she said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the number The climate crisis will cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths a year between 2030 and 2050 alone due to malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea and heat stress.

Referring to the international target of limiting the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, Lady Scotland said: “If you look at Tuvalu, in 2015 we said it was ‘1.5 degrees Celsius was to stay alive’. . That was not a slogan, that was a reality (in) Tuvalu.

“We are now at 1.5 degrees Celsius. So every time ministers leave Tuvalu, they are never quite sure that their island will still be there when they return. That’s not tomorrow’s reality – that’s their reality today.

“I’m incredibly concerned that the clock is ticking and ticking and ticking, and it’s almost running out,” she added.

Born on the Caribbean island of Dominica, Scotland moved to Britain with her family and grew up in London, where she subsequently served as attorney general during the last Labor government.

She has been Secretary General of the Commonwealth since 2016 and survived an attempt to remove her by Boris Johnson two years ago and an earlier media storm over the renovation of her home.

At a meeting of Commonwealth health ministers in Geneva last month, where the group committed to building climate-resilient healthcare systems in the most vulnerable countries, Scotland cited a series of “shocks” that had put pressure on the 25 small island states in development. (SIDS) who make up almost half of the Commonwealth’s membership.

This includes the health and economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as debt problems and food insecurity – which have been exacerbated by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

These factors made it harder to create the kind of strong, well-staffed healthcare systems that could prove resilient in the face of the climate crisis, Scotland said.

The climate crisis was more urgent than the threats from “major killer” diseases such as heart attacks and strokes, the pressures of antimicrobial resistance and the possibility of another pandemic, she said.

Commonwealth officials give examples of climate-related health problems across the organization and say they are not limited to poorer member states 2019 paper warned that Canada will likely see more “exotic” infectious diseases, as well as more cases of locally endemic diseases such as West Nile virus.

This could lead to action, Scotland said, adding: “When I became secretary-general in 2016, the difficulty we had in helping people understand that (climate change) was pervasive was very tough.”

But she pointed to Britain’s recent extreme weather and said: “Now people are starting to get a little taste of what other people have experienced.”

The Commonwealth has helped smaller member states access international funding to strengthen their healthcare systems, Scotland said, including by improving access to digital healthcare services for when people could not access face-to-face treatment.

The Commonwealth also coordinated the technology solutions such as hi-tech mosquito surveillance equipment and AI-based early warning systems for dengue outbreaks, she said.

The ministerial meeting took place just before the WHO World Health Assembly in Geneva, where countries agreed that the The WHO should focus on the climate crisis as an escalating threat to health over the next four years.

“I’m a glass-half-full person,” Scotland added. “There is no point in saying that the world will end; it will only end if we allow it.

“And those of us who can fight must fight and we must fight now.”