Africa’s public health and policy leaders have warned that El Niño has the potential to trigger a public health emergency in affected countries, a situation compounded by increasingly unpredictable and extreme climate change.
In a policy paper titled ‘Super El Niño Threatens a Public Health Emergency in Africa’, published in The Lancet on Tuesday, the authors called on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare El Niño a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
Malawi’s former Minister of Health, Dr Peter Kumpalume, who is the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Southern Region senior regional representative, is among the authors of the paper.
Other authors include Zimbabwe’s Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr Douglas Mombeshora; Senegal’s Minister of Health and Social Action, Professor Ibrahima Sy; public health expert Dr Lul Riek of the Africa CDC Eastern Africa Regional Coordinating Centre; and Namibia’s Minister of Health and Social Services, Dr Esperance Luvindao.
Professor Fortunate Machingura, a lecturer at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and director of the Climate, Environment and Health Department at the Centre for Sexual Health and HIV and Aids Research Zimbabwe (CeSHHAR), also contributed to the policy paper.
It reads in part: “Preventing avoidable deaths will require robust WHO coordination, repurposed and streamlined access to climate financing through the Green Climate Fund and related instruments, rapid scale-up of climate and health surveillance, activation of preparedness plans, strengthened early warning and response systems and surge responses for extreme weather.”
The paper states that a coordinated and adequately funded response is needed urgently, especially in affected countries, before foreseeable hazards translate into preventable illness and loss of life. It further calls on the WHO to act without delay.
It also argues that countries that bear historical responsibility for the climate crisis should help finance an expanded response in climate-vulnerable low- and middle-income countries.
According to the paper, the projected toll of heat-related deaths in Africa is expected to surpass that in the Northern Hemisphere during summer, amid heightened risks of floods, droughts and rainfall anomalies in Southern and Central Africa.
The paper adds that compounding hazards are converging around water insecurity, wildfires, infectious disease outbreaks and disrupted healthcare systems, with Africa bearing little responsibility for the climate crisis while suffering disproportionate impacts.
“Equally, for Africa, this crisis presents a chance for us to contribute key lessons to the global response, using the urgency of El Niño to reshape health systems for a changing climate,” the paper further states.
“We call on other African states to request a PHEIC determination now, and on WHO to give this its fullest attention.”
Locally, Malawi’s El Niño Response Plan requires K488.5 billion. In the first week of September, Chief Secretary to the Government Justin Saidi, who leads the Ad Hoc Committee on El Niño, reported that only K163.7 billion had been mobilised.
But since then, no update has been given on the money so far mobilised.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (Ifpri) simulation models predict that depending on severity of weather impacts and market disruptions, the combination of El Nino and the Gulf-related price shock could reduce Malawi’s Growth Domestic Product by between one percent and seven percent.
In a recent blog a week ago titled ‘El Nino and Rising Fertiliser Costs: How Vulnerable is Malawi in 2027?’, Ifpri suggests that nearly half a million more Malawians could fall into poverty in 2027 amid high fertiliser costs and El Nino crop losses, which are anticipated to push up food process.
The blog further states that the 495 000 additional people would add to the 17.3 million Malawians already expected to live below the $3-a-day poverty line.
