A Call for Action to Uphold the Right to Health Amidst Inaction, Injustice and Climate Crisis

Climate change presents a fundamental threat to human health. It affects the physical environment and all aspects of natural and human systems.

The right to health has been consistently compromised by political inaction and lack of accountability, and funding. Populations facing marginalization or vulnerability, such as people who live in poverty, are displaced, are older, or live with disabilities, suffer the most.

While inaction and injustice are the major drivers of the global failure to deliver on the right to health, current crises are leading to a violation of this right. The burning of fossil fuels is simultaneously driving the climate crisis and violating our right to breathe clean air. The climate crisis is, in turn, causing weather events that threaten health and well-being across the planet and strain access to meet basic needs.

Climate change is directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and hurricanes, and they are increasing in scale, frequency and intensity.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), research shows that 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from undernutrition, Malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress between 2030 and 2050. WHO data indicates 2 billion people lack safe drinking water, and 600 million suffer from foodborne illnesses annually, with children under 5 accounting for 30% of foodborne fatalities.

Temperature and precipitation changes enhance the spread of vector-borne diseases. Without preventive actions, deaths from such diseases may rise. Climate change induces both immediate mental health issues like anxiety and post-traumatic stress, and long-term disorders due to factors like displacement and disrupted social cohesion.

“Realising the right to health requires governments to pass and implement laws, invest, address discrimination and be held accountable by their populations”, said WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “WHO is working with governments, partners and communities to ensure the highest attainable standard of health, as a fundamental right for all people everywhere”.

Africa is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. According to the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC), tens of millions of Africans are already feeling the negative health impacts of climate change, in the form of heat stress, extreme weather and increased transmission of infectious diseases. Since 2022, 19 million people have been affected and at least 4000 individuals killed because of cyclones, floods, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and famine.

Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases through better transport, food and energy use choices can result in very large gains for health, particularly through reduced air pollution.

Climate change and Equity

In the short to medium term, health impacts of climate change will be determined mainly by the vulnerability of populations, their resilience to the current rate of climate change and the extent and pace of adaptation. In the long term, the effects will increasingly depend on the extent to which transformational action is taken now to reduce emissions and avoid the breaching of dangerous temperature thresholds and potential irreversible tipping points.

While no one is safe from these risks, the people whose health is being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are the people who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it: people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities.

Addressing climate change’s health burden underscores the equity imperative: those most responsible for emissions should bear the highest mitigation and adaptation costs, emphasising health equity and vulnerable group prioritisation.

Need for urgent Action

To avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit the temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5 degrees is not considered safe, however, every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.

Jackline  Kalunge, PACJA