27.09.2019
Climate change threatens the achievement of effective universal healthcare

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) "Minimising the health harms of climate change and optimising universal health coverage will only be achieved through an integrated agenda and aligned solutions, say Renee Salas and Ashish Jha. The sustainable development goals (SDGs) target many different aspects of human wellbeing; they are interconnected and some might seem to create tension (such as economic growth in SDG 8 and ecological stewardship in SDGs 12 and 15).1 These interconnections are particularly clear for universal health coverage (UHC) (SDG 3.8), which will be substantially harder to achieve without climate action (SDG 13). Climate change threatens the very tenets of UHC; the regions of the world most vulnerable to climate change face the greatest difficulties in achieving it." (Photo: Climate Change 2018/Topu Saha/flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)