Averting Global Crises With Climate-Resilient Health Sector

Last January at Davos, Oliver Wyman and the World Economic Forum warned policymakers and the health sector about the death, disability, disease, and displacement that will be among the worst consequences of global warming over the next quarter of a century. Based on the findings of our study, Quantifying the Impact of Climate Change on Human Health, climate change may spawn a long-term health crisis that would challenge the resilience of the global public health system and healthcare industry. Because of this devastation, the global economy and health system will rack up losses of more than $12.5 trillion. Making matters worse, the populations suffering the brunt of the calamities will be those in parts of the world least financially able to relieve the pain and least responsible for climate change.

Today, Oliver Wyman and the Forum are calling on policymakers and health industry leaders to develop proactive strategies to mitigate the threat likely to unfold, according to our modeling. In a recent piece in the Forum’s Agenda blog, we laid out three priorities that we hope the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro and the United Nations climate summit in Azerbaijan will consider as a first step in getting ahead of the impending health crises. They are:

1. Focus on making local healthcare systems climate-resilient

2. Unleash private-sector innovation in healthcare, life sciences, and academia targeting climate-induced health challenges

3. Allocate government resources and enact policies to enable a robust global response, regardless of ability to pay

The pressing challenge of climate change necessitates the transformation of global health systems into resilient structures capable of safeguarding public health during large-scale and potentially lengthy health crises. Even without climate events to contend with, the reality is that many health systems in developing and even developed nations would not currently be considered resilient.

We define resiliency as the ability of a system to avoid and contain a crisis, then stabilize after the crisis has hit, and finally, recover from it. We saw firsthand evidence of the lack of resiliency during the COVID-19 pandemic when hospitals in almost every country were overwhelmed by both demand and absenteeism among staff.

We outlined many strategies under each priority that policymakers could pursue — all aimed at making health systems more resilient, bolstering innovation in the life sciences, and better preparing the public. These included development of enhanced early warnings systems that leverage technology and the media, regular stress testing of public health systems, and global knowledge sharing and cooperation among public health systems. This includes close collaborations with organizations like the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Governments and global and multinational funding mechanisms must also play a big role providing sustainable funding and supportive policies that reflect the long innovation cycles necessary in pharmaceutical, medical device, and digital health technology R&D. The aim is to unleash private-sector innovation now, before the crises, have struck and elicit long-term commitments through targeted research grants, and a reduction in developmental red tape on longer-horizon projects. These are similar to tactics used during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The path to building climate-resilient health systems is complex and requires coordinated actions across multiple domains, and unfortunately, we are running out of time.

To read the full WEF Agenda article, please click here.