Dr. Taylor described how conditions like dengue fever, influenza and asthma are impacted by climate and how social determinants of health, such as food availability and quality, are also adversely affected.
He noted that the climate is changing, but the larger issue is that it will continue to change and do so in even more intense and variable ways. Thus, achieving sustainable development of good health will be even more challenging in the future. In particular, the nutritional quality of food and crop yields will decrease, and this will result in worsening malnutrition for many populations. Climate change also significantly impacts the cost of energy, water and other infrastructure necessities.
Dr. Taylor outlined some possible steps to reduce the impacts of climate change. He argued that the world needs a strong mitigation agenda, with the goal of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the coming years. With respect to medicine and medical services, the healthcare sector itself must examine its role in the use of energy, healthcare waste management and transportation services for patients and healthcare goods. Given that the healthcare sector is extremely large, the impacts of decisions made by each hospital and healthcare system can be tremendous when added together.
With this concept in mind, Dr. Taylor noted that the world as a whole needs a comprehensive research agenda to further understand and address the climate crisis. In fact, Dr. Taylor put things quite bluntly: We will have climate change, thus any strategy to address this must have an adaptable agenda that can be flexible in light of unforeseen changes and outcomes.
Migration & Health
The next speaker in the summit was Kolitha Wickramage, MD, MPH, PhD, MA, global migration health research and epidemiology coordinator, United Nations (UN) Migration Agency, Migration Health Division, Global Data Institute, Berlin, Germany. Dr. Wickramage spoke on the subject of migration, climate change and health and sought to outline the actions of the UN Migration Agency, both historically and in the present day.
He explained that human mobility has many geopolitical implications, but the health impacts of this are often overlooked. In fact, an evidence gap exists in migration and health research in that most of this research comes from high-income countries. Thus, good data from developing nations is harder to find. This poses a challenge because many developing nations suffer from the negative consequences of migration, both into and out of these countries.
