In our emergency interventions, we are responding to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change and environmental degradation. This includes deaths and injuries caused by extreme climate events, changing patterns of infectious disease, malnutrition and food insecurity linked to droughts and high temperatures, and loss of lives and livelihoods when communities experience heavy flooding.
In many of the settings where MSF teams work, we witness that the communities we support are disproportionately affected by climate change. That’s because factors such as conflict, poverty, gender and lack of access to healthcare can amplify climate-related risks to health.
In a humanitarian brief for the 2022 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report, MSF staff from a variety of backgrounds bear witness to the impacts of climate change on health in some of the communities in which we work. The brief explains how MSF teams are adapting operations in the context of climate change, and striving to reduce our own environmental footprint. The following are a few snapshots from MSF’s humanitarian brief in the 2022 Lancet Countdown report. To read the full brief, click here.