The last Lancet The Countdown report, which monitors the health consequences of climate change, highlights the need to prepare for future calamities. Despite the fact that Covid-19 continues to spread, a recent study suggests that the probability of another pandemic increases by 2% each year.
In the coming decades, the interplay between the climate crisis and public health could create a perfect storm of global devastation and disruption.
The good news is that if we take immediate steps to transform our healthcare systems, we can avert another covid-style catastrophe. As with the current pandemic, the obstacles to mitigating climate change are not just scientific or technological, but are also rooted in geopolitical and market forces. Self-interest can undermine public health, particularly when it comes to equitable access to resources.
Even so, the international community came together to introduce innovative mechanisms such as the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access (Covax) mechanism, which was designed to remove financial barriers that prevented low-income countries from obtaining vaccines.
We must put similar mechanisms in place to address the global impact of climate change on public health. While many of the possible solutions are already known to us, their effectiveness requires that we implement them before disaster strikes. This is not just a moral imperative; it’s also a smart economic option that would likely reduce the overall cost of outbreaks and other weather-related catastrophes.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt last November underscored the fact that sustainability is not just about decarbonisation, electric vehicles or climate adaptation measures such as flood defences. It is also about preparing for a pandemic.
More generally, climate change is expected to change the habitat range of deadly pathogens, causing mosquito-borne infectious diseases such as malaria, yellow fever and dengue fever to spread to northern Europe and Canada. At the same time, the climate crisis threatens to increase the prevalence of malaria, cholera and schistosomiasis in the developing world.
The world’s poorest countries remain the most vulnerable to climate change, even though they do the least to create the problem. That is why the international community must take immediate action to ensure that impoverished and marginalized people have access to vaccines, treatments and diagnostics.
Given the devastating effect that a single virus has had on billions of lives, livelihoods and the global economy over the last three years, it is abundantly clear that we must take urgent action to counter climate-related health threats.
The global effort to ensure the equitable distribution of covid-19 vaccines provides a useful model. The Gavi Covax Advance Market Commitment, a donor-funded financial mechanism accelerated by the European Investment Bank, enabled people in the world’s 92 poorest countries to obtain free vaccines. These low-income countries, which account for roughly half the world’s population, would have struggled to secure access otherwise.
More than 1.6 billion doses of Covax have been delivered to developing countries so far, helping to ensure that 52% of their citizens are fully vaccinated, compared to a global average of 64%.
This is a remarkable achievement, particularly in the context of the intense hoarding of vaccines by developed countries, the export restrictions that some countries have placed on vaccines and the components needed to produce them, and the actions of some manufacturers that have apparently prioritized profits over equity.
The success of the Covax model shows that there is scope for innovative financing solutions similar to climate-related health risks. For example, several private sector actors are currently exploring an Advanced Climate Market Commitment to stimulate innovation and investment in climate solutions.
Similarly, there is great potential for mechanisms based on the International Finance Facility for Immunization model, which uses targeted “vaccine vouchers” to anticipate long-term donor commitments so funds can be made available. immediately.
Multilateralism is essential to establish these safety net mechanisms. Covax was possible only because it united the financial power and knowledge of more than 190 governments, along with partners from the private sector, civil society groups and international agencies, around a common cause that benefited all.
But if Covax had already been around before the pandemic, equipped with at-risk contingency financing and scaling capacity, it could have mounted its response — the world’s largest and most complex global vaccine rollout — even faster, ultimately saving more lives. .
After COP27, donor governments and multilateral lenders need to examine how existing financial mechanisms could be adapted to combat climate change to ensure funds are available as soon as a threat arises.
Minimizing the overall financial costs of climate-related health risks involves not only prevention but also early action. These safety net mechanisms must also be designed to protect the world’s most vulnerable people, wherever they live.
But the most important thing is that these steps are taken now. What the lancet The report warns, the countdown to the next global health crisis has already begun. —© Union Project
Seth Berkley is the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and Werner Hoyer is the President of the European Investment Bank.
