HEALTH
A variety of tropical diseases common in the Greater Horn of Africa are indirectly or directly associated to climate, especially the extremes. Many vector borne diseases are sensitive to changes in meteorological parameters such as rainfall, temperature, and humidity. These include malaria, cholera, Rift Valley Fever (RVF) meningitis among other drought and flood related diseases. On human health, extreme climate events trigger rampant outbreaks of water borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, malaria and Rift Valley Fever among others in areas where generally these diseases are not common. Some unique diseases in humans and animals have been observed to recur after periods of extreme climate events such as floods and droughts.
The strategy for enhanced application of climate in the health sector shall include
1) Enhancing interactions between health and climate experts through capacity building and awareness workshops.
- Promote use of climate information and early warning to reduce vector borne disease epidemic outbreaks.
- Promote use of climatic information in health sector policy making.
- Create awareness on factoring of climate information and early warning products in national and regional health management policies
- Establish processes of exchanging climate and health information
- Identify health programmes which require climate/health information
- climate related disease risk analysis and vulnerability zone mapping to strengthen epidemic prediction and preparedness initiatives.
- Downscale climate information for prediction and early warning for health sector
- Establish linkages of immerging diseases and new diseases strains related to climate change
- Testing the malaria prediction prototype model for the GHA sub-region
- Enhance data exchange initiatives in climate related health programmes·
- Develop prototype climate related disease prediction models
- Training of health experts in the use of malaria prediction model «top
