Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical humanitarian teams around the world and across multiple disciplines share their experiences with how climate change has likely exacerbated health and humanitarian crises. Through country snapshots and case studies in the Lancet Countdown 2020 Report Humanitarian Policy Brief, authors share their first-hand perspectives on how climate-related effects and disasters have likely contributed to increased transmissions of infectious diseases, water scarcity and food insecurity, forced displacement, and mental health impacts in some settings. They also give an update on MSF’s efforts to increasingly apply a Planetary Health lens to humanitarian action, adapt operations to be more responsible and responsive, and to reduce its own negative environmental impacts.

Dahdaleh Institute members Carol Devine (DIGHR Community Scholar), is a co-author of the brief and Linn Biorklund Belliveau is a peer reviewer.  They also contributed to prior Lancet Countdown Humanitarian Briefs in 2019 and in 2018 alongside Dr. James Orbinski, Director, Dahdaleh Institute and Dr Syed Imran Ali, Research Fellow, Dahdaleh Institute.

The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is an international, multi-disciplinary collaboration that exists to monitor the links between public health and climate change. It brings together 38 academic institutions and UN agencies from every continent, drawing on the expertise of climate scientists, engineers, economists, political scientists, public health professionals and doctors. Each year, the Lancet Countdown publishes an annual assessment of the state of climate change and human health, seeking to provide decision-makers with access to high-quality evidence-based policy guidance. 

Check out the full brief here.

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