Скачать или смотреть Podcast on Our common ambition: Prioritising children’s health amidst the climate crisis

This podcast is part of a peer learning course by Save the Children and Geneva Learning Foundation for health workers worldwide.

Learn more and enroll: https://go.learning.foundation/tglf/c...

Based on Save the Children’s policy brief “Prioritizing Children’s Health Amidst the Climate Crisis,” this podcast explores how climate change uniquely threatens children’s health.

*Why children face greater risks:* Developing bodies, minds, and immune systems make children more vulnerable to environmental threats than adults. A child born in 2020 will experience 6.8 times more heatwaves, twice as many wildfires, 2.8 times more crop failures, 2.6 times more droughts, and 2.8 times more river floods compared to children born in 1960.

*Direct health impacts:* Heat-related illness affects infants who cannot regulate body temperature effectively. Extreme heat during pregnancy causes preterm birth and low birth weight. Climate change expands vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue, increases diarrheal diseases, and threatens food security. By 2050, climate change could cause 40 million additional children to suffer stunting and 28 million more to experience wasting from malnutrition.

*Mental health consequences:* Climate disasters cause psychological distress through direct trauma, displacement, and future anxiety. Alvaro, 17, from Chile notes: “The effects are not just material damage. Often they are mental. Therefore, psychosocial support is important, which is often not considered.”

*Threat multiplier effect:* Climate change amplifies existing challenges rather than creating new ones. Children in poverty, displacement, or with disabilities face intensified risks. One in four urban children globally live in slums lacking safe water and sanitation, where climate impacts worsen already dangerous conditions.

*Health system strain:* Climate change increases demand through more sick children while reducing capacity via damaged clinics, blocked transportation, and disrupted supply chains for medicines and vaccines. Dr. Abdi Majalm, Chad’s Public Health Minister, emphasizes vaccines become “absolutely critical tools” when everything else is under stress.

*Funding gap:* Global health adaptation needs total \$11 billion annually, but actual funding averaged only \$150 million yearly between 2009-2019. Pakistan’s health sector lost \$143 million after 2022 floods, showing why grants are needed over loans.

*Solutions in action:* Laos hosts the first Green Climate Fund health project, strengthening clinics against extreme weather, improving disease early warning systems, and training health workers. Sierra Leone demonstrates community-level climate adaptation.

*Key recommendations:* Build climate-resilient, low-carbon health systems with reinforced facilities, backup power, and trained staff. Ensure cross-sector collaboration between health, water, agriculture, and energy departments. Improve data collection by age, gender, disability, and location.

*Youth voices matter:* Dia, 16, from Bangladesh: “Please listen to us and give additional importance to our voice. We promise to become part of the solution.” An 18-year-old from South Africa: “We are going to be the ones suffering from the climate crisis, so policymakers should include us. Nothing about us without us.”

*For health workers:* Your frontline experience witnessing climate health impacts provides essential knowledge for developing effective solutions. This peer learning course connects health professionals from over 80 countries to share experiences and practical strategies.

Nafiso, 17, from Somalia concludes: “Climate change is not a distant threat. It is about saving lives. Listen to us, act for us and secure a safe and healthy planet for all children.”

The climate crisis is fundamentally a child health crisis requiring coordinated action from global policy to individual health facilities, with health workers playing a critical role in protection and adaptation strategies.

🤖 This podcast was generated by AI to explore the policy brief and peer learning course. While the conversation is AI-generated, everything is based on the resources themselves.