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Integrating climate change into the management of priority health risks in Ghana
Project:
Summary:
The objective of the project will be to generate adaptation benefits by building local and institutional capacity to manage adverse climate change impacts on human health, especially among vulnerable sub-groups such as women and children. The results of the project will be relevant to decision-makers in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa and in regions of the world where climate sensitive diseases such as malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, and meningococcal meningitis are prevalent. It will complement the governments’ present initiatives such as the Roll Back Malaria programme, Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI). The project will address long term adaptation to climate change needs by supporting the development of local capacities and institutions to explicitly factor in climate change risks on key disease burdens and various national level plans and programmes that are designed to manage their expected spread and impact on development. As this project is closely aligned with national development priorities, this will not require large-scale diversion of development resources
File(s):
Adaptation Experience:
Climate is a primary determinant of whether a particular location has suitable environmental conditions for the transmission of malaria, meningitis, and diarrheal diseases. At the same time, while climate is an important driver of malaria, it is not the only one. Given seasonal cycles of food- and waterborne diseases, climate change is likely to affect their incidence and distribution. Without implementation of effective and efficient of health policies and measures that explicitly recognize climate change risks, in conjunction with efforts to reduce other current risks, development gains in Ghana are likely to be seriously compromised.
Potentially very vulnerable populations are those living in Ghana’s very dry, wedge like strip of land extending east 40 km from Sekondi-Takoradi. Expected sea-level rise will not only likely require movement of coastal populations and infrastructure due to land-loss, but will also increase the salinity of groundwater sources, affect fishing industries, and decrease resiliency to flooding and storm damage. With such impacts, the potential for exacerbating existing Ghana disease burdens of malaria, diarrhoeal illness, meningitis, respiratory diseases, and malnutrition, is very large.
Results and Learning:
Current interventions to support the health sector do not take the risks of climate change into account. To date, Ghana’s approach to climate change in relation with human health vulnerability has been a reactive, and is characterized by an absence of a well-defined strategic and policy intervention plan for both the medium and long-term. Besides financing shortages, the absence of a policy framework for addressing climate change related health risks, absence of technical and institutional capacities at local and national levels makes the need for corrective interventions even more urgent. Current control programs for malaria, diarrheal diseases, and meningococcal meningitis are also of limited value, as evident by the high disease burdens despite the efforts to manage such health risks. While the Roll Back Malaria programme, Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI), and other programs have recently commenced implementation to help reduce morbidity and mortality, these programs do not integrate the implications of climate change, including variability, on disease control activities.
Sustainability:
The project will seek to lift the barriers to counter the increased probability of health risks from climate change. This will entail institutional strengthening, capacity building, and awareness raising under a programmatic approach to climate change sensitive health risk management.
Three critical components underpin this initiative:
- (1) Strengthening technical capacities to manage climate change-resilient health risks;
- (2) Climate change health risk mainstreamed into decision-making at local and national health policy levels, and
- (3) Information management and effective dissemination of climate change health risk knowledge. Demonstration activities will also be implemented in selected pilot areas identified to be at particularly high health related risks due to climate change.
Replication:
Not yet applicable
