Global Health Talk 2022: Learning from experts on synergising One Health and Planetary Health framework as center for tackling Global Health crisis
Melvine Otieno
Introduction
Global health is a practice of science that prioritizes the health outcomes for vulnerable populations and communities across the globe. Through scientific research, education and collaborative intervention, individuals who study or practice global health work towards eliminating the health disparities in low-resource settings around the world. Each country across the globe faces unique challenges in meeting the needs of its most vulnerable members of society. The Global Health Talk (held on 5–6 July 2022 at the Umweltforum in Berlin, Germany) organized by the Global Health Hub Germany, was a gathering that brought leading experts in the field and high-ranking representatives from the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) which offered an opportunity to participate in exciting panel discussions on climate & global health, the global health architecture, and global health within Germany’s G7 Presidency. The welcome speech was done by Prof Karl Lauterbach, German Federal Ministry of Health.
Sub-Saharan Africa is confronted with monumental health challenges as a result of climate change and other global health issues. These result in a large number of premature deaths from childbirth and malnutrition, Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDs, infectious diseases as well as emerging pandemics (Ebola and COVID-19). It is critical to work on harmonizing standards and policies across the region by publicizing and exchanging best practices for addressing common health risks. National and regional institutions must be strengthened in order to develop and implement health policies and systems, whether in education or research.
As the founder of the Planetary Health Eastern Africa Hub (PHEAH), Planetary Health Alliance Senior Next Generation Fellow and Team Associate member of Women Leaders for Planetary Health. I was honored to be invited to participate in this inaugural Global Health talk and to share my experiences and insights from the African perspective on climate and health issues and also be a voice for the vulnerable communities especially the Indigenous communities affected by climate change in Kenya. Local activism is key to linking climate and health in East Africa, the PHEAH-plays a key role in these efforts to bring local, national and regional health professionals, academic experts, researchers, students, artists, policy makers, local communities and local NGOs together in tackling these global issues. Also, being a climate change activist in Kenya, where I actively engaged communities in a local project on communicating the impacts of climate change through art and dance. Followed by a recent interview I did with Raphael Kimosop (an indigenous person from the Endorois community) on Climate Change Adaptation and Health by the indigenous community from Lake Bogoria, Kenya. The Global Health Talk offered an opportunity to share my opinion and experiences in this space as a panelist together with other like-minded global women to discuss “Global Health needs climate action — Germany’s way forward”.
Major insights on Global Health Needs Climate Action panel
What do you think are the biggest challenges that we need to tackle to accelerate climate action in Global Health?
Sophie Gepp said “Climate change and health and planetary health has moved from being out of the box out which was labeled at global health talk years ago to the central stage. It is fundamental to the health system in the future, we can’t tackle the future without integrating climate action and resilience into health systems. One big challenge now is how exactly we do it. Our institutions are historically coming from different challenges and how do we integrate this into existing institutions as the challenges are that institutions are not resourced enough, not connected enough, or not collaborating enough. Especially when we are dealing with two different silos of time that are used to collaborating with each other, we have to break down these barriers. We don’t have to invent new institutions but we have to find good ways of working together moving forward. We also have to be very mindful since we have different needs with regards to health and climate change in different countries and challenges since we have to find very local, national and regional solutions but also great opportunities.”
What should Germany’s next steps look like?
“Germany needs to invest in long term research that supports climate change issues especially the issues of mental health, food security and heat waves. Tighten climate regulations especially law on greenhouse gasses as gas emission by 2030 should be reduced to 55%” — Melvine Otieno
“Be bolder, be faster than what we are doing, make a commitment and give the respect resource and finance, space and priority that it deserves as we will get there.” — Dr Manraj Phull
I also participated in the Global Health Hub members “Community Day” where I had the opportunity to connect, engage in and jointly develop solutions in Global Child Health group. We brainstormed on several ideas under rethinking the child health agenda globally including; child education (improvement of child health literacy), awareness on mental health (safe space for children to share their emotions and promoting adolescent well being), schools guidance and counseling programmes, awareness about these safe spaces (programs and inclusion of disabled children), need for investing in school health including health education into school curriculum, and more.
Catalyst Dialogue results, Global Health Hub Germany
The Global Health Hub Germany, in cooperation with Healthy Developments, initiated a new and innovative format in 2022 with the Catalyst Dialogues, in which two Catalyst Dialogue papers on key global health issues addressed at the Round Table Health and Climate Change on the sidelines of the 2022 World Health Summit were published. The first Catalyst Dialogue on Global Health Architecture focused on a global health architecture that works for all, insights from a debate on where Germany stands, what must change and how Germany can contribute. I participated in the second Catalyst Dialogue on Health and Climate Change focusing on a holistic understanding on health that strengthens climate action on why this is so and what it means for policy and practice.
I also later joined the World Health Organisation (WHO) Hub event (speaker series complexity of pandemics) Securing Human, Animal and Planetary Health in Berlin, Germany on 5 July 2022.
My key takeaways from the talks from the international speakers were as follows:
“197 is where I will start from, the number of cases of monkeypox over the course of 2 generations in 1958 (Denmark), 1970 (Zaire, DRC), 2003 (USA), 2017 (Nigeria) and 2022 (Global) thirty nine (39) years after the last reported case. We had multiple opportunities to learn these lessons but for some reasons we were not able to and the question is why? I think one of the challenges we have had is: How do we link our traditional work and national public health institute to the expertise that studies animals and understand the ecosystems between animals and humans to human behavior and how that affects transmission, mobility behavior. All the sciences are almost working in parallel and we don’t have enough opportunities to bring them together to make us understand the important lessons to make sense of what is happening with an outbreak like this and today we are paying a price over five thousand confirmed cases and we don’t know where this outbreak is going. The question therefore is: How often do we learn the same lessons and when do we finally start doing something about this?” — Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu
“Through this concept of embracing complexity and here asking attention for the much used ‘One Health’ term but in the new definition that was recently put together and adopted by the organizations such as Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Environmental Programs (UNEP). Let’s step away from our focus on humans as the center of all attention to a way of thinking where we acknowledge that the health of humans and the environment are tightly linked and therefore, the need to be really studied and appreciated in conjunction with the one health approach. Just played out during the pandemic and we have been looking at yet another example of a virus that spilled over from animals, we think that it’s not yet completely settled what the trajectory was but certainly spillover and then from the global spread explosive spread of this disease with fertility number that was just mentioned but also spill back of this virus into many other animals seen on natural infections in many of the animals that share our world that we then contaminated with our viruses and picked them up the viruses started to circulate (for instance in farmed mink and white tailed deer), accumulate mutations and were transferred related back to humans again. So this is an example of the connectedness of the cycles of humans, animals and the environment and the environment that we share between those animals. Lots of other animals experimentally infected, unfortunately also some that are not impacted.”- Prof Marion Koopmans
However, while we have made appreciable progress towards attaining global health equity, we still have a long way from where we ought to be. Not until the life outcome and well-being of everyone, everywhere becomes a priority irrespective of nationality, status, skin color, or region can we truly say we have made progress. As of this moment, for instance, the life of a Somali woman is in no way equitable to that of a Ukrainian woman. It may be in words, but certain events have shown that they are not, in reality. This means there is still much work to be done.
I hope the Global Health Talk 2023 happening on 12–13 June 2023, will bring more insights covering these key aspects of global health equity, policy perspectives and shared best practices. I would like to really appreciate the Global Health Hub Germany for their inclusivity and continuous partnership with individuals from the Global South, as representation matters. As a member of this Hub, I am looking forward to continuously participating in addressing and discussing these global health issues with members across the globe. As we continuously act locally and regionally, we would be able to share our key findings giving global health perspectives through our ongoing SOPHEA project-Strengthening One and Planetary Health in Eastern Africa which strives to explore, investigate, teach and act on the increasing climate and environmental changes and their interactions with health within the framework of Planetary Health and One Health.
