Climate Change and Public Health
Climate Change affects the social and environmental determinants of health, namely clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter. Projecting approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress between 2030 and 2050. The impact of climate variability and change on water-borne and on vector-borne diseases in East Africa has been well documented. Climate change will intensify some existing health threats and new health threats will emerge. This webinar aims at increasing knowledge and raising awareness on the implications of climate change on health in East Africa.
Panelists
Professor Barbara Evans
Chair in Public Health Engineering in the School of Civil Engineering University of LeedsTopic: Integrating Climate Science into Public Health Policy: Lessons from HyCRISTAL Project
A chartered engineer with a second degree in Development Studies, Professor Barbara Evans holds the chair in Public Health Engineering in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds. She leads a multi-disciplinary team that works on sanitation, hygiene and water services in the global south with a particular focus on urban sanitation in cities and towns. Professor Evans’ career spans 30 years; she worked at the World Bank for over twenty years before joining the University in 2009 and has lived and worked in South and East Asia, Africa and Latin America. Recently Professor Evans has been working extensively in East Africa with the HyCRISTAL project exploring the intersection of climate change and water/sanitation services planning and delivery. She provides strategic advice to the United Nations Joint Monitoring Program for Water and Sanitation, the RCUK Grand Challenges Research Fund; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Container-based Sanitation Alliance and the Government of India.
Dr. Adugna Woyessa Gemeda
Director for Bacterial, Parasitic and Zoonotic Diseases Research Directorate Ethiopian Public Health InstituteTopic: Past and Present Climatic Impacts on Public Health: Key issues Arising from the Ongoing IPCC Assessment
A researcher and public health specialist at Ethiopian Public Health Institute, a research arm of the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia. Dr. Adugna Woyessa Gemeda's educational background includes a master’s degree in Medical Parasitology/Biology and a doctoral degree in medical public health from Addis Ababa University. His research and work focused on the epidemiology of highland malaria and its association with climate particularly impacts of El Nino on malaria epidemics. He is instrumental in designing how to measure low and seasonal malaria transmission. He also designed and operationalized a national malaria sentinel surveillance system and malaria surveillance suite as part of his persistent malaria efforts in improving early warning system.
Dr. Andrew Githeko
Principal Research Scientist Kenya Medical Research Institution (KEMRI)Topic: Examining Future Threats to Public Health in the Context of a Changing Climate
Dr. Andrew Githeko, PhD, is a medical entomologist/parasitologist trained at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (UK) and currently a Principal Research Scientist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute. He has been working on malaria for the last 35 years and has focused on the ecology of the vectors and the disease epidemiology and control , with a special focus on the impacts of climate change and variability on malaria transmission. He has established a Climate and Human Health Research Unit at the Centre for Global Health Research, KEMRI , Kisumu. Dr. Githeko has been a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientist; 1998-2008 and has co-authored three of its reports. He has published over 140 research papers. Among his scientific contributions was the development of a climate based malaria epidemic early warning systems for the Wester Kenya Highlands that has been used by Kenya Meteorological Department since 2012.
Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum
Coordinator of Climate Change and Health Program World Health Organization (WHO)Topic: Policy responses to protect public health: Lessons from COVID-19
Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum heads the climate change and health program at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters. His training is on the ecology of infectious disease and public health, and he has worked on climate change and health for 20 years.
Diarmid has played key roles in the development of the first quantitative estimates of the overall health impacts of climate change, resolutions of the World Health Assembly, the first three WHO global conferences on health and climate, and the expansion of WHO’s climate change and health program, which has now provided direct support to over 30 low- and middle-income countries.
Acknowledgements
