WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, (left) and Dr Vanessa Kerry, CEO of the health non-profit Seed Global Health (middle) in conversation with Ravi Agrawal, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy (right). Specific health actions need to be included in countries’ climate targets – officially called the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – according to several health advocates speaking at the UN Climate Week in New York City over the past week. “Our agenda should be health-centric,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), speaking on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly. “We need to use the resources wisely, meaning targeting those populations, affected populations and then from there of course you can move to the rest because resources are limited,” Tedros said. The demand for a holistic view in framing NDCs to ensure a “healthy and stable future” in was also reiterated in a signed letter by 20 leading civil society organizations and sent to officials at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the entity supporting global response to climate change. The rise in extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and floods, are directly impacting health and healthcare facilities. Dr Vanessa Kerry, CEO of the health non-profit Seed Global Health, called for health to be “embedded in the NDCs”. “We need to have health metrics, and we need to stop thinking about it as a sunk cost, but rather as an investment,” Kerry said. Centering health at COP This decade, health has already gone from being a side note at the annual UN Climate Conference of Parties (COP) to having a day dedicated to the subject at the last COP in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Both the Baku (Azerbaijan) COP presidency, which will host this year and the Belém (Brazil) […]
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