Cancun: Health on the back burner

CLIMATE CHANGE

Photo: UN Photo/Sophia Paris: Climate change is bad for your health … A young girl receives treatment for cholera in Haiti

10 December 2010 - A joint pilot study by Nurses Across the Borders, a Nigerian health NGO, and SeaTrust Institute, a US- based scientific and educational non-profit organization, will collect data to help map the impact of global warming on malaria in the West African country.

“The nurses will note if malaria is recorded in any area where it usually isn’t, and all this information will be fed into a climate model which will help prepare health-related climate change projections for the country,” said Dr Lynn Wilson, executive director of the Institute.

About 500 nurses in Lagos, Nigeria, will participate in the pilot project starting in 2011, officials of the organizations announced at a side event at the UN climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico. The initiative will also create awareness about the links between health and climate change at the community level.

Peters Omoragbon, who heads Nurses Across the Borders, said nurses were the primary healthcare givers in Nigeria and often the first point of contact during a disease outbreak.

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