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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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Safe abortion care at MSF

Safe abortion care at MSF

Unsafe abortion is a major cause of maternal death, and the only one that is completely preventable. Yet over 30 million unsafe abortions occur each year, leading to at least 29,000 deaths and millions of serious complications—nearly all in low- and middle-income countries. MSF teams see these tragic consequences first-hand, treating thousands of patients every year with severe, potentially life-threatening effects from unsafe abortion.


To mark International Safe Abortion Awareness Day (28 September 2024), this Collection presents highlights of MSF’s work on safe abortion care (SAC) as a way to reduce maternal death and injury. By re-assessing and reshaping how our projects deliver SAC in fragile and conflict-affected settings, we have been able to significantly expand services in those contexts and across MSF projects globally. In parallel, we also conducted in-depth studies of abortion complications and their contributing factors in fragile settings, where a dearth of evidence limits understanding of women's needs in accessing comprehensive care. These findings are helping to identify gaps in service delivery and inform operational decision-making.

International Safe Abortion Day 2022

International Safe Abortion Day 2022
Unsafe abortion is a leading cause of maternal death, and the only one that is completely preventable. Yet over 30 million unsafe abortions occur each year, leading to at least 28,000 deaths and millions of serious complications—nearly all in low- and middle-income countries. MSF teams see these tragic consequences first-hand, treating thousands of patients every year with severe, potentially life-threatening effects from unsafe abortion. So in 2016 we launched a program to systematically implement safe abortion care (SAC), starting with ten pilot sites and then applying the lessons learned to scale up at projects across the globe. This Collection presents highlights of these efforts. Since our first publication on the need to provide SAC as a way of reducing maternal death and injury, several studies assessed the role of unsafe abortion in driving this suffering in specific contexts. Others described internal obstacles to providing SAC, operational solutions developed, and outcomes achieved. And we advocated for shifting towards community-led and self-managed SAC, particularly given new obstacles that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Diabetes care in humanitarian settings

Diabetes care in humanitarian settings
Diabetes affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, a large majority of them living in low- and middle-income countries. Yet finding effective strategies, tools and policies for effectively managing this chronic illness—especially amid war, displacement or exclusion from care—is a neglected area of humanitarian medicine. Here we present a cross-section of work on this front by MSF and collaborators. Several studies assess the shift towards community-based, nurse-led models of care in rural settings. Others explore obstacles to diabetes care for war refugees living in camps in Jordan or Lebanon, highlighting how health programs can adapt to their needs. The demonstration that insulin retains potency for 30 days if cooled without refrigeration is opening doors to more patient self-management, as a case study in remote South Sudan shows. At the same time, MSF and others call for regulatory and financing policies that make diabetes medications and supplies cheaper, better adapted to humanitarian settings, and far more available to patients whose lives depend on them.
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Climate change and health

Climate change and health