hat is one of the key fndings in a
recent report from Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF), which translates to
Doctors without Borders, an organisation
I am sure many of you are aware of. It is a
worldwide movement of more than 42,000
people that provides medical assistance to
people afected by confict, epidemics, and
disasters. At the recent COP24 in Poland, I
caught up with Dr Maria Guevara, Senior
Operational Positioning and Advocacy
Advisor at MSF, for this biotech and
sustainability edition of Innovators Magazine,
to fnd out about the links between health
and climate change and the work MSF is
doing to raise awareness about it.
“There remains a ‘global denial’ on just how
connected climate change is with health,
much less with humanitarian action, and
the work to raise awareness of the issues is
as much within the organisational fold as it
is in the larger community,” Dr Guevara said.
“Unfortunately, emergencies are increasingly
becoming more complex. Unless we actually
begin to see how interrelated emergency
situations, whether due to confict, natural
disasters, or epidemics, are with climate
change, we will fail to respond efectively to
the needs. As it is, the international response
capacity today is already ill-equipped.”
MSF, which works globally in the most
underserved areas, and in the worst climate
afected hotspots, is stepping up its eforts
to end the denial. At COP24 Dr Guevara
presented a briefng paper that integrated
the fndings of the 2018 report of the
Lancet Countdown (lancetcountdown.
org) on the connections between climate
change and health, with MSF’s on-the-
ground experience in treating some of the
world’s most vulnerable populations, with
a view to highlighting the dramatic health
consequences already unfolding.
“This report is our frst foray into climate
change discussions and is a glimpse of our
initial refections into making the linkages
between climate change and health as an
organisation,” she said. “We need to be better
prepared, improve our knowledge-base,
work more closely together and bring each
of our collective advantages to the table.
Seeing the reality on the ground of some of
the larger health and humanitarian impacts
places MSF at the heart of the issue, and we
‘The health impacts of climate change
demand an urgent response, with
unmitigated warming threatening to
undermine health systems and core
global health objectives’.
Climate
crisis
+ health
By Dr Rocio Ortego,
contributing expert analyst on global health and climate