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.
To mark Earth Day 2024 (22 April) we present a cross-section of work by MSF and collaborators, drawing from a range of data sources and 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.
At the time of writing, many people around the world are feeling the pain, disruption, and devastating health consequences driven by climate change. The world has been shocked by the ...
Noma, also known as cancrum oris, is a rapidly progressing life-threatening infection that affects the mouth and face. Noma is preventable and easy to treat if addressed in the early reversible stages, but most often deadly if untreated. The disease most commonly affects children who are chronically malnourished or whose immune systems are otherwise compromised. Noma affects an estimated 140,000 children annually. Noma was added to the WHO's list of Neglected Tropical Diseases in 2023.
MSF is working to discover more about noma. This collection highlights MSF's mixed methods research on treatment outcomes, burden of disease, attitudes towards the disease and other aspects of noma.
For more information on MSF's work on noma, you can also visit https://noma.msf.org/.