Southeast Asian health experts emphasized that as global warming offers immediate and serious risks to human health, health should be at the center of any conversation on climate change.
The World Health Organization has identified climate change as the “single biggest threat facing humanity,” with far-reaching implications for human health beyond its well-researched effects on the environment and ecology.
Extreme weather events that cause fatalities, such as cyclones and prolonged heat waves, are fueled by the climate crisis and contribute to the spread of infectious diseases that are vector-, food-, and water-borne. Disasters brought on by climate change and the uncertainties surrounding the planet’s future also make mental health problems worse.
“We truly must emphasize the fact that human health and environmental health are inextricably linked, and that we depend on each other for good health.” At the Asia-Pacific Climate Week in Johor Bahru, Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health in Malaysia, stated that everything is interconnected.
The Sunway Centre for Planetary Health’s principal planetary health scientist, Renzo Guinto, stressed that the most vulnerable groups, including women and children, are disproportionately affected by the negative health effects associated with climate change.
Guinto, who also holds the position of director of St. Luke’s Medical Center’s program on planetary and global health, stated at a seminar hosted by Save the Children Philippines last week that “this is a health sector issue that cannot be ignored anymore.”
“Health Day”
The first-ever “health day” in climate negotiations will take place on December 3 at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
This, according to Guinto, indicates that world leaders are beginning to understand that “we need a healthy planet so we can have healthy people.”
Health professionals wrote an open letter to world leaders gathered in the Gulf state for COP28, urging them to commit to a reasonable and equitable clean energy transition and an expedited phase-out of fossil fuels, calling these measures “the decisive path to health for all.”
Along with this, they made a plea to the corporate sector, wealthy economies, and development finance organizations to step up and keep their promises to promote sustainable energy, clean air, and economic development for the people most affected by the climate catastrophe.
“The strain on healthcare systems and healthcare personnel would be unmanageable in the absence of bold climate action. The letter from medical professionals and organizations, including St. Luke’s Medical Center and St. Paul’s Hospital of Iloilo Inc., stated that the advancements in health that have been made in recent decades will be in vain and that the detrimental effects of climate change will wreck our hopes for a safe, equitable, and just future.
Later this month, in the Petrostate, climate negotiations are scheduled to focus heavily on the topic of phase-outs of fossil fuels that warm the world.
“Health must continue to be the top priority for not only COP28 but also COP29, COP30, COP50, and so on. “It must be at the center,” Mahmood stated.
Preserving the next generation
According to climate scientists, in order to ensure a future that is habitable for everyone, swift and forceful action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is required.
The United Nations Environmental Programme issued a warning, stating that Earth is set to warm by a disastrous 2.9 degrees Celsius this century according to current country pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Mahmood urged everyone to speak out about how climate change affects health and to push for an end to the world’s addiction to fossil fuels, not only medical experts.
The wellbeing of “not the only ones living today, but those who are yet to be born in the years and decades to come” depends on a healthy planet, Guinto underlined.
