The World Health Organisation (WHO) is not sitting back in the fight against global warming. On the occasion of World Health Day, celebrated on 7 April 2022, this United Nations (UN) agency, which specialises in public health, has launched a vibrant call for climate action. “The climate crisis is a health crisis: it is the same unsustainable choices that are killing our planet and killing people,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We need transformative solutions to wean the world off its dependence on fossil fuels, to reinvent economies and create wellness societies, and to protect the health of the planet on which human health depends,” the WHO director continued.
In its Manifesto for a Healthier and More Environmentally Responsible World post-Covid-19, published in May 2020, the WHO already prescribed sustainable production patterns. These include protecting and preserving nature as the source of human health, investing in essential services from water and sanitation to clean energy in health facilities, ensuring a rapid energy transition for health, promoting healthy and sustainable food systems, building healthy and liveable cities, and stopping the use of taxpayers’ money to fund polluting activities.
Africa is paying a heavy price
The health impact of climate change is most acute in Africa. With almost 3% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the continent is unfairly the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Extreme weather events are destroying the livelihoods of people, who live mainly on rain-fed agriculture. This situation exposes them to numerous diseases, including water-borne diseases such as cholera. At the moment the epidemic is affecting nearly 4,000 people in Cameroon, according to official sources.
Read also-COP26: Africa’s place in the negotiations at a time of climate change
Malnutrition is also a problem. According to the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), by the middle of the century, wheat production could fall by 17%, maize by 5%, sorghum by 15% and millet by 10%. If warming exceeds 3°C, all regions currently producing maize, millet and sorghum would become unsuitable for these crops.
Boris Ngounou