30 Oct 2023

As the world prepares to congregate at the Expo City in Dubai from November 30 to December 12 for the COP 28, a global conference that discusses issues around climate change mitigation and adaptation, preparatory debates have started in earnest.

At a preparatory conference held at the University of Botswana on Friday, contributors were all in agreement that when it came to the issue of climate change, the world had been focusing too much only on the agriculture sector, seemingly neglecting other equally affected sectors like health.

Making his contribution, Botswana Harvard Health Partnership laboratory director, Professor Sikhulile Moyo said  the COVID-19 pandemic was a reminder that the world needed to stay alert on issues of climate change and health.

“Climate change has affected our ecosystems and our micro environment. We have seen the emergence of new pathogens, or even old ones that have never been known to cause problems are now wreaking havoc. Our global health system needs to be prepared because we are in sure danger,” he said.

He said that other signs that the global world was in danger because of climate change were the detection of malaria carrying mosquito outside of their traditional habitat.

Professor Moyo also said that the emergence of new non-communicable diseases had clear connection to climate change, citing the rise in deadly cases of cholera which continued to claim lives in Zimbabwe.

He said however, said that positives could be derived from the fact that enough data was available in the country across various sectors, only that not much had been done to put it together. He encouraged various sectors to work together for the common good of fighting climate change.

Professor Moyo also encouraged policy makers to always ensure that in policy formulation, stakeholders such as the community was involved as they were better informed on the best adaptive measures they needed. He cautioned against ignoring indigenous knowledge systems like early predictions of droughts and floods.

“Natives are very knowledgeable in predicting such things. They would know beforehand whether to plough or not,” he said. Ends