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Climate change is exacerbating health risks worldwide, from extreme heat events to flooding and hurricanes. Strengthening primary health care (PHC) is crucial for building climate-resilient health systems. PHC can address climate-related health impacts like non-communicable diseases, malnutrition, and infectious diseases. Key strategies include investing in PHC workforce capacity, integrating climate and health data, and promoting integrated models of service delivery. While adaptation is essential, rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are equally important. PHC professionals can play a role in both climate adaptation and mitigation by promoting healthy behaviors and advocating for sustainable policies. The World Health Organization’s Fourteenth Global Programme of Work provides a framework for these efforts, emphasizing multisectoral action and the importance of health in all policies.

The 2024 Goalkeepers report, “A Race to Nourish a Warming World,” projects that without immediate global action, climate change will condemn an additional 40 million children to stunting and 28 million more to wasting between 2024 and 2050. Scaling up solutions now can avoid this outcome, while also building resilience to climate change and spurring much-needed economic growth.

In 2023, the World Health Organization estimated that 148 million children experienced stunting, a condition where children don’t grow to their full potential mentally or physically, and 45 million children experienced wasting, a condition where children become weak and emaciated, leaving them at much greater risk of developmental delays and death. These are the most severe and irreversible forms of chronic and acute malnutrition.

At the same time, as global challenges intensify, the total share of foreign aid going to Africa has decreased. In 2010, 40% of foreign aid went to African countries. But that number is now down to just 25%—the lowest percentage in 20 years—despite more than half of all child deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. This trend leaves hundreds of millions of children at serious risk of dying or suffering from preventable diseases and threatens the unprecedented progress the world made in global health across Africa between 2000 and 2020.

The report highlights proven tools that are helping solve malnutrition, building people’s resilience to the worst impacts of climate change, and further driving down childhood deaths. They include:

• Efforts to scale up new ways of fortifying pantry staples, such as salt and bouillon cubes, can reduce millions of cases of anemia and prevent deaths due to neural tube defects.
  • In Ethiopia, a new process to fortify salt with iodine and folic acid could lead to a 4% reduction in anemia and could eliminate up to 75% of all deaths and stillbirths due to neural tube defects.
  • In Nigeria, fortifying bouillon cubes with iron, folic acid, zinc, and vitamin B12 could avert up to 16.6 million cases of anemia and up to 11,000 deaths from neural tube defects.
• Efforts to provide a high-quality prenatal vitamin for pregnant women could save almost half a million lives and improve birth outcomes for 25 million babies by 2040.
  • Adopting multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS) costs as little as $2.60 for an entire pregnancy in all low- and middle-income countries.

Climate hazards, including extreme heat, are associated with increased risks of developing complications that lead to adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes. These may include multiple causes of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality such as gestational diabetes, hyper tensive disorders of pregnancy, preterm birth, low birth weight and stillbirth. In addition to the health risks related to poor nutrition, water, hygiene and sanitation, the effects of exposure to climate hazards and their aftermath during and after pregnancy can affect mental health and contribute to intergenerational trauma. They may increase stress, anxiety and depression – known risk factors for adverse perinatal outcomes.