Johannesburg - South Africa’s primary healthcare system needs to be “robust, resilient, of high quality and accessible” if the country is going to brave the storm of climate change and the threats posed to human life from extreme weather events.
Their new paper, National Health Insurance and Climate Change: Planning for South Africa’s future, was published in the latest issue of the South African Journal of Science. Dr Caradee Wright, Professor Matthew Chersich and Professor Angela Mathee write how as the NHI is being initiated, “serious thought” needs to be given to how climate change is likely to impact health and universal health coverage to plan for and mitigate the likely effects as soon as possible.
“In South Africa we have witnessed a gripping drought in the Western Cape, devastating heavy rains, fires, flooding and strong winds caused by an upper-air cut-off low in October 2017 in Durban and regular heatwave and fire risk warnings in several provinces.