Join us for a panel event to hear stories about the negative impacts of climate change on health and to explore urgent needs and solutions.
Climate change is a critical health and humanitarian issue today and for future generations. Human health depends on the health of our planet. While all people are affected by the impacts of climate change, people and communities made vulnerable risk becoming more vulnerable without urgent action.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) already works in many regions and countries where climate change exacerbates existing health and humanitarian crises. Our teams observe direct and indirect negative health effects of climate change on the most vulnerable people in different parts of the world, including:
- Higher incidences of water and food-borne diseases, such as hepatitis and cholera.
- Significant spikes in cases of malaria and dengue
- More frequent and intense extreme weather events such as cyclones in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia and the Pacific creating serious humanitarian need.
- High numbers of patients, especially children, who need treatment for severe acute malnutrition.
Climate change poses an existential threat to humanity and as such requires the broadest possible action and voices, including from MSF and the health and humanitarian sector. Add your voice to the conversation by joining us for a panel discussion on September 26, from 7-8:30 at the Toronto Public Library. Our panelists will share the health and humanitarian impacts of climate change that humanitarians are seeing locally and globally and highlight what MSF is doing to collaborate, adapt our response and to mitigate the organization’s own environmental footprint.
Our panel includes:
- Carol Devine, Humanitarian Affairs Officer and MSF Climate Expert
- Edward Xie, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Emergency Physician and former MSF Field Worker
- Sarah Lamb, Sharing Incident Memory and Mitigation (SIMM) Project Coordinator and former MSF Field Worker
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is a Nobel Prize-winning emergency humanitarian medical organization that has helped tens of millions of people since its founding in 1971. MSF now has more than 40,000 staff members on the front lines of humanitarian crises in close to 70 countries.
