Healthcare in a Changing Climate 2025

The potential to mitigate the health and economic impacts of climate change2 Enhanced prevention, improved diagnostics and novel treatments could halve the impacts of climate change on health. This assessment is based on a detailed review of the underlying causes and available medical interventions for eight priority medical conditions and diseases, which are aggravated by climate- change impacts (see Appendix for detailed methodology). The assessment’s focus is on identifying areas where medical innovation could make a meaningful impact. Figure 1 presents a summary of the findings, for example demonstrating significant opportunities to improve prevention, particularly in the continued development of vaccines. In the case of dengue, excellent progress has been made, especially with the pre-qualification of the TAK-003 vaccine by WHO in 2024.33 Further development could expand this success to vaccines for additional medical conditions. Diagnostics would benefit from continued improvement, particularly the development of affordable, accurate and easy-to-use point-of-care tools. In resource-constrained settings, the lack of rapid and definitive diagnostic tests limits timely intervention and effective treatment, for example for heat-related diseases and asthma. In terms of treatment, addressing drug resistance remains a pressing need because of poor treatment adherence and the limited effectiveness of therapies, which forces some patients to take the same medicine many times. This is a particularly widespread issue for infectious diseases, such as malaria.34 All this underscores the need for new vaccines, drug development and improved strategies to ensure patients complete their treatment courses. In addition to traditional life sciences interventions, new technologies offer substantial opportunities to reduce the climate impact on health. For example, desalination technology is important for reducing incidences of climate-related hypertension, while low-water sanitation solutions could reduce stunting-associated enteric diseases. Finally, climate services for health35 – such as collecting and using climate knowledge to enhance health solutions – could improve the effectiveness of medical responses to climate change. Such services can leverage a range of climate readings (e.g. temperature, precipitation, wind) and non- meteorological data (e.g. agricultural production, health trends, infrastructure mapping). This approach36 enables robust risk and vulnerability analyses, as well as the development of long-term projections and scenarios. For instance,37 leading climate services could potentially predict outbreaks of infectious diseases as early as two months in advance. When these predictions are integrated with healthcare services, they can significantly enhance preventive measures and prepare health systems to mitigate impacts, potentially resulting in a reduction of up to 25%38 in the incidence of such diseases.2.1 Assessing the health and economic impacts of interventions Healthcare in a Changing Climate: Investing in Resilient Solutions 9