Building Climate-Resilient Health Systems in India: A Comprehensive Health Systems Approach

Abstract

Climate change has a significant impact on human health, leading to increased mortality and morbidity worldwide, including in India. To address this issue, countries must work on developing health systems that can effectively respond, manage, recover, and adapt to climate-related shocks and stresses. Strengthening the health system's resilience requires focusing on essential building blocks, such as leadership, health information systems, the health workforce, essential medical products and technologies, service delivery, and health financing. India, as a key player in this global effort, has undertaken many initiatives in each of the health system building blocks. However, there is a pressing need for India to strengthen its planning processes, ensure adequate financial resources, and develop a robust data system to make its health system resilient to climate change and low carbon emissions. Editorial Climate change, directly and indirectly, affects human health through weather patterns, such as heat and cold waves, storms, droughts, floods, etc., and indirectly by affecting water, air, and food quality [1]. WHO forecasts a global increase of about five million deaths between 2030 and 2050 because of climate change [2]. The Climate Impact Lab Study (2019) estimates that India will experience 10% of additional deaths due to climate change by the end of this century [3]. Regarding the economic losses, the Reserve Bank of India has estimated that the Indian economy could be at risk of losing 4.5% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 owing to lost labor hours due to climate change, precisely due to extreme heat and humidity [4]. While the health system should respond to the healthcare needs of people affected by climate change, it also faces its capacity limitations. Health system resilience is crucial, defined as its ability to predict, prevent, prepare for, absorb, adapt, and transform during shocks and stresses while providing continuous routine health services [5]. A climate-resilient health system is expected to respond to, manage with, recover from, and adapt to climate-related stresses and shocks, fostering sustained improvements in population health despite an unstable climate [6]. Such sustainable health systems provide an opportunity for long-term human development by addressing the health impacts of climate change and promoting overall well-being. Strengthening the health system's building blocks in unstable climates is essential to safeguard population health at large. Climate resilience involves strengthening the healthcare system to better adapt to evolving health threats due to climate variations. The health system building blocks serve as the basis for expanding key components that specifically bolster climate resilience to ensure that the enhancement of climate resilience leverages and fortifies health systems. Climate change is the most significant health hazard confronting humanity; governments across the globe, including the Indian Government at union and states, are working towards improving the resilience of health systems to climate change [7]. WHO has developed the operational framework for developing a resilient health system for climate, comprising 10 components; the foundational components are leadership and governance, information systems, health workforce, essential medical products, technologies, service delivery, and health financing (Figure 1) [6]. As the health system building blocks are the primary component for achieving universal health coverage and health outcomes, we discussed its importance and initiatives taken under these building blocks at the union and state levels in India to better understand the preparedness of the Indian health system resilience for climate change. Now, all the above-mentioned components are discussed below one by one in detail.