Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: policy brief for Médecins Sans Frontières 2022

As an independent international medical humanitarian organisation responding to health crises in more than 70 countries, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is seeing first-hand the suffering caused or exacerbated by climate change and environmental degradation, most often experienced by the most vulnerable people. We are witnessing how climate change directly threatens health – for example, through death and injury due to extreme weather – and how climate change impacts health indirectly, through food insecurity and shifting patterns of climate-sensitive infectious diseases.

Recognising the role of the climate crisis in amplifying humanitarian needs, MSF is adapting its operations to be more responsive to the populations it serves while also facing up to the challenges of measuring and reducing its own environmental footprint.