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Climate change and health | Collections | MSF Science Portal

The climate crisis is also a health and humanitarian crisis, disproportionately impacting people in the world’s most climate-sensitive regions—mainly low- and low-middle income countries with the least capacity to respond.

MSF and other humanitarian organizations witness the consequences daily. More frequent, intense weather events and a warming planet contribute to food and water scarcity, more severe and widespread disease outbreaks, and more injuries and preventable deaths. They also drive massive population displacement, with over 32 million people fleeing their homes in 2022 alone due to floods, drought, storms and fire—nearly triple the number displaced by violence and conflict.

As global leaders convene in Dubai for the UN climate conference (COP28, 30 Nov-12 Dec 2023) we present this cross-section of work by MSF and collaborators, drawing from first-hand experience at our medical projects. Emphasizing the urgency of adapting humanitarian operations to the climate crisis, the collection also explores loss and damage through a health lens, proposes policies and practices for creating climate-resilient health organizations, and advocates for embedding fair, just ethics perspectives into humanitarian action and research on climate.

Collection Content

Technical Report
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Policy Brief

Lancet Countdown on Climate Change and Health: Policy brief from Médecins Sans Frontières 2023

Blume C, Dallatomasinas S, Devine C, Goikolea I, Guevara M,  et al.
2023-11-15
2023-11-15
Most of the over 70 countries Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) works in are in lower-income regions. They are facing not only humanitarian crises but also the most...
Journal Article
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Commentary

What cannot be mitigated or adapted to, will be suffered. Loss and damage in health and humanitarian terms

Schwerdtle PN, Devine C, Guevara M, Cornish S, Christou C,  et al.
2023-09-09 • The Journal of Climate Change and Health
2023-09-09 • The Journal of Climate Change and Health
Journal Article
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Review

Ethics, climate change and health – a landscape review

Sheather J, Littler K, Singh JA, Wright K
2023-08-14 • Wellcome Open Research
2023-08-14 • Wellcome Open Research
Anthropogenic climate change is unequivocal, and many of its physical health impacts have been identified, although further research is required into the mental health and wellbeing effe...
Conference Material
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Video

Planetary health and neglected tropical diseases

McIver L
2022-12-01 • MSF Paediatric Days 2022
2022-12-01 • MSF Paediatric Days 2022
Conference Material
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Video

Time for action: Climate change in the humanitarian sector

Issa R
2022-11-30 • MSF Paediatric Days 2022
2022-11-30 • MSF Paediatric Days 2022
Journal Article
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Commentary

The relationship between climate change, health, and the humanitarian response

Baxter LM, McGowan CR, Smiley S, Palacios L, Devine C,  et al.
2022-11-05 • Lancet
2022-11-05 • Lancet
The climate emergency is a humanitarian and health crisis. Extreme weather events, heat stress, declining air quality, changes in water quality and quantity, declining food security and ...
Journal Article
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Review

Climate-sensitive disease outbreaks in the aftermath of extreme climatic events: A scoping review

Alcayna T, Fletcher I, Gibb R, Tremblay LL, Funk S,  et al.
2022-04-15 • One Earth
2022-04-15 • One Earth
Outbreaks of climate-sensitive infectious diseases (CSID) in the aftermath of extreme climatic events, such as floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, and heatwaves, are of high public heal...
Journal Article
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Commentary

A failure of ambition on climate action will amplify humanitarian needs

Voûte C, Guevara M, Schwerdtle PN
2021-12-03 • British Medical Journal (BMJ)
2021-12-03 • British Medical Journal (BMJ)
Humanitarian actors are struggling to keep up with the demands of increasingly frequent, erratic, and overlapping crises at current levels of warming.
Journal Article
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Commentary

Calibrating to scale: a framework for humanitarian health organizations to anticipate, prevent, prepare for and manage climate-related health risks

Schwerdtle PN, Irvine E, Brockington S, Devine C, Guevara M,  et al.
2020-07-09 • Globalization and Health
2020-07-09 • Globalization and Health
Climate change is adversely affecting health by increasing human vulnerability and exposure to climate-related stresses. Climate change impacts human health both directly and indirectly,...

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World Hepatitis Day 2023

World Hepatitis Day 2023
Viral hepatitis is a major cause of disease and death globally. To mark World Hepatitis Day (July 28th) we present a selection of recent MSF research exploring how to effectively deploy powerful medical tools that could turn the tide on hepatitis C and E—but now reach only a tiny fraction of people who desperately need them, especially in low-resource and emergency settings. For hepatitis C, where groundbreaking new antiviral drugs can cure nearly all patients, MSF is piloting simplified, community-based models of care that offer rapid screening, diagnosis, and treatment under one roof. Some programs focus on the complex needs of highly vulnerable, hard-to-reach populations, such as people co-infected with HIV or TB or who inject drugs. Turning to prevention, an ongoing vaccination campaign against hepatitis E in an outbreak setting is showing early signs of short-term protection. Final results from this South Sudanese refugee camp, where poor sanitation and water quality regularly lead to outbreaks, should help plug a key evidence gap that—along with other barriers discussed in a commentary article—impedes widespread uptake of the vaccine.
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World TB Day 2022—Progress on tools and care models amid global setbacks from Covid-19
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Snakebite envenoming: a neglected health crisis

Snakebite envenoming: a neglected health crisis

Every year 2 million or more people fall victim to snakebite envenoming, mostly in poor, rural communities of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Between 83,000—138,000 of them die, while hundreds of thousands more suffer debilitating long-term complications or disabilities.


Although some antivenom medicines are highly effective when used promptly and appropriately, many snakebite victims get no treatment at all. Those who do may receive antivenoms which don’t work against the type of snake that bit them, or were not rigorously tested for safety and effectiveness.


To mark World Snakebite Awareness Day on September 19th, the Collection linked below brings together recent MSF work on this highly neglected disease. Several articles and conference presentations help fill evidence gaps on the burden of disease and its impacts or on treatment outcomes with specific antivenoms. Others examine how to tackle the formidable challenges of availability and affordability, the absence of regulatory oversight for making, testing and registering antivenoms, and the anemic R&D pipeline for new products—all of which impede access for patients to safe, effective treatment tailored to local snake species.

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Climate change and health

Climate change and health