5.4
PLANETARY HEALTH
By Mami Mizutori, head, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
In the face of future disasters
T here are strong links between the global health agenda and the imperative to implement disaster risk reduction. Yet, historically, much of the coordination between the global health agenda and the agenda of prevention has been limited to emergency response planning. That response is undoubtedly critical to saving lives after a disaster. But much greater benefits can be attained through reducing risks before they become deadly, costly disasters. This became evidently clear at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Both fields champion prevention first, and the need for this approach is growing as countries face more extreme and unpredictable weather events due to climate change, and the threat of a new pandemic remains. This is why the Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly on the Midterm Review of
It is important to recognise and build on the commonalities between the health sector and disaster risk reduction, especially regarding shared goals, risks and methods. SHARED GOALS The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 seeks to reduce disaster losses in lives, livelihoods and health. Among its seven targets, the first two focus on reducing disaster mortality and reducing the number of affected people. This aligns the framework’s objectives directly with the health-related Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 3. The average annual number of deaths and missing persons from disasters decreased from 1.77 per 100,000 people between 2005 and 2014 to 0.82 between 2012 to 2021. We can attribute this positive trend to the expansion
The pursuit of health is a political choice, as is the pursuit of better integration between health and disaster risk reduction – and to achieve both we need all sectors of the government and stakeholders represented and involved the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction – adopted unanimously by all member states – stresses “the need to enhance coordination, coherence and integration between disaster and health risk management systems, including at the local level”.
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Health: A Political Choice – From Fragmentation to Integration
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