The Ebola crisis and climate change have been identified as the two foremost global health issues in a list of six calls for action outlined by the 2014 M8 Alliance Statement made at this year’s World Health Summit. The three-day event began with a special session on Ebola which focused on addressing the weaknesses of health systems and gaps in global health governance.
Global Health Programme Director, Ilona Kickbusch, chaired a session on sustainable health systems and the role of the private sector in universal health coverage, as well as a workshop comparing the French and German Global Health strategies.
Jonathan Patz, Visiting Fellow at the Global Health Programme, spoke in two sessions on climate change and health and specifically on the effects of global environmental change on infectious disease.
The thread uniting these important issues is the fundamental need for long-term commitments towards global public goods. Health systems must be strengthened in line with the commitment to providing universal health coverage to all. And once the current Ebola outbreak has been contained, the focus must return to the systemic changes that should be made in order to avert further public health disasters in the future.
Moreover, the immediacy of these crises diverts attention from challenges such as climate change that simmer constantly in the background. Just as Ebola has shed harsh light on the vulnerabilities of health systems, so too may the effects of climate change on health become more acutely felt if appropriate preventive action is not taken. Systemic and holistic approaches must be adopted to address these cross-cutting issues and ensure that we are not continuously caught unprepared when the warning signs have been there all along.