Last month, world leaders gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum’s first in-person winter annual meeting since the COVID-19 pandemic began. While parts of the world may be saying “We’re done with COVID… the virus is not done with us”, argued Seth F Berkley of the Global Vaccine Alliance. He noted that the risk of a COVID-19 variant “with very severe disease, or one that can escape immunity” cannot be ignored.

Beyond this, one among the drivers of new threats to the health security of populations is climate change. Notwithstanding the obvious impacts of climate change on the well-being of peoples, such as through morbidity/mortality from natural disasters induced by droughts and floods, climate change also contributes to changing the distribution and movements of diseases.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) most recent report described some of the linkages between climate change and the movements of both communicable and non-communicable diseases. Malaria, for instance, has been shifting to places with higher altitudes owing to warmer climates.

The dengue virus has likewise been moving to places with higher relative humidity, while chikungunya, which is a less familiar but equally important mosquito-borne virus, is on the rise in Asia, Latin America, North America, and Europe.

As far as non-communicable disease are concerned, the IPCC report also warned that heavier rainfall, higher temperatures and more frequent flooding contribute to increased diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera, other gastrointestinal infections, as well as food-borne diseases from Salmonella and Campylobacter.

Climate change poses a non-traditional security threat from the perspective of health security, as changing climates are not within the control of individual states, and yet these contribute to compounding health inequalities across countries and regions. One of the imperatives moving forward is for more foresighted planning practices by country governments today.

The United States’ Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) presents a potential model in this regard. It provides analysis in identifying populations at lower government units like counties, cities and territories, whose health is vulnerable to climate change. This contributes to recommended measures for adaptation and preparedness.

A further initiative moving forward is to explore the potential of digitalisation in improving the responsiveness of public healthcare services. This was among the strategies recommended by the World Economic Forum in a report released last month, on “Global Health and Healthcare Strategic Outlook: Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare.” Digitalisation enables better targeted decentralised approaches to healthcare governance, allowing for healthcare sector transformation amidst increasing uncertainty.

Ensuring sufficient production capacity and equitable distribution of vaccines will continue to be a priority moving forward. However, it is equally important to prepare for future novel health threats, going beyond COVID-19, and to pay attention to the distributional impacts of climate change in the long-term.