Health and Climate

The Challenge

Extreme weather events and shifts in weather patterns over the long term are destabilizing the foundations of health and development in many low- and middle-income countries, undermining efforts to end AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, and weakening the health systems needed to fight these diseases.

While the threat of extreme weather events is universal, the speed and severity of the impacts are not. Countries with a high disease burden, where the Global Fund has made significant investments in HIV, TB and malaria programs and health and community systems, are often most vulnerable and face considerable challenges to adapt. 

The impacts of the changing climate on health can be extremely disruptive: 

• Droughts reduce agricultural yield, causing undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies and making people, especially children, more susceptible to diseases in the short term. 
• Floods can destroy health facilities and supplies, separating people from the medicines they need to control diseases like HIV, TB and malaria, as well as other essential medicines. 
• The increasing number and severity of extreme weather events are causing people to become displaced. This leads to disruptions in health service delivery as well as essential diagnosis and treatment services, which in turn can lead to increased disease transmission and drug resistance. 
• Extreme temperatures – especially excessive heat – can seriously compromise health supplies at multiple points along the supply chain, from storage and transport to administration. In hot, poorly ventilated clinics or pharmacies, overheated stock rooms can damage medications, rapid diagnostic tests and other medical supplies.  

Malaria is one of the most climate-sensitive diseases. Temperature changes, shifting rainfall patterns and extreme weather events are affecting the spread of malaria. Warmer temperatures, higher humidity and increased rainfall fuel mosquito breeding and parasite growth and expand the habitat and lifecycle of mosquitoes that transmit the disease. 

Compounding these challenges, the impact of the changing climate disrupts the Global Fund’s mission to reduce health inequities by worsening existing inequalities and vulnerabilities of people affected by HIV, TB and malaria.

Our Response

Fighting AIDS, TB and malaria remains the Global Fund’s core mission. We work with partners to safeguard the health gains that have been made fighting these diseases against the increasing impacts of long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns. We support countries that are the most vulnerable to the impacts of the changing climate – between 2023 and 2025, 71% of our investments and over 80% of our malaria funding are going to the 50 most climate-vulnerable countries.

We invest US$2 billion¹ a year to build strong and climate-resilient health and community systems that are better prepared for pandemic threats and help countries progress on the pathway to sustainable development, improving global health security.

For example, the Global Fund supports countries to: 

• Digitize their health systems and records so critical patient information (such as HIV and TB histories and treatment plans) won’t be lost in future floods. 
• Invest in community health workers that can reach people in the most remote locations. Engaging with and empowering communities and civil society is crucial to understanding context-specific climate risks to health. 
• Work with communities and civil society to strengthen community health systems and services. Partners living in the community are the key to identifying and scaling up locally led solutions that can withstand the increasing impacts of climate change.

The Global Fund’s model is geared towards agility in the face of crisis. By providing rapid, flexible funding from our Emergency Fund, we support countries to respond to the impact of extreme weather events to ensure the continuity of existing HIV, TB and malaria programs and services. From 2014 to 2023, 37% of emergency funds awarded addressed climate-related disasters and extreme weather events.

Working in partnership is crucial to address the most pressing global challenges. In 2023, the Global Fund announced new strategic partnerships with the World Bank and the Green Climate Fund to accelerate investments in the nexus between health and climate. 

Fighting deadly infectious diseases must go hand-in-hand with responding to climate change. This is our fight. We won’t stop until the job is finished.