“My background is in biology and ecology. I am part of that as well Scientific Panel for Amazonwhich brings together greater than 320 scientists, and I’m a member Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Climate Network And I’m from the National School of Public Health. I’ve been working at Focus for 25 years and have been working on climate change since 2005, assessing its effects on health and the social determinants that exacerbate them, because we all know that inequality exacerbates the results of climate change.
From the start, once I wrote my first scientific article, I actually have been attempting to connect environment and health, because with out a healthy environment there is no such thing as a human well-being. What we do at Focrose is precisely that: environmental health. I can not see a planet without the ecological connection that features humans. In isolation, academic subjects don’t explain the results we’re experiencing.
Environmental health clearly suggests that: Assessing the impact of major projects and in addition the impact of ongoing climate change. Deforestation within the Amazon, a subject I’ve all the time heard about, is now understood as part of a bigger technique of degradation: alteration of the hydrological cycle, pollution, lack of biodiversity, illegal mining.
As much because the climate debate at COP 30 takes center stage, it’s politics that dominates. But we can’t be afraid of politics, and we want to know what is going on in Brazil and world wide to know these changes and their direction. For example, there are parallel debates for the conservation of the Amazon that concern the Congo rainforest, the second largest on the planet.
From an environmental health perspective, we want to debate the role of those forests to formulate policies and take proactive motion to advertise health. Historically, Brazil has waited for things to occur before taking motion – we’ve seen in Rio Grande do Sul, São Sebastião, Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro and lots of other places we’ve experienced natural disasters as a result of extreme weather and climate events.
Health in climate change debates
With every environmental disaster, the query returns: How many more times do we’ve to see this scenario before we alter course? Health is a latecomer to this debate. By the fourth report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), a United Nations scientific body created in 1988, had almost no mention of health. It was only in 2007 that the panel began to have a look at the problem in a different way, revealing how we insist on separating what was never separated. Health and environment have all the time been linked. The forest people know this, the riverside communities know this, the quillamboles and indigenous people know this. Is it just white men who still do not know this? And yet we pride ourselves on having a lot knowledge. I might say we all know little or no.
I actually have been following UN climate change conferences for a few years and have never seen an audience like Belem: sensitive to climate change. This is nice, since it indicates greater awareness, but we won’t just follow theory. The Amazon is home to the best indigenous biodiversity in Latin America and is the biome with the most important variety of microorganisms on the planet – and the least known.
We have identified about 48 necessary viruses, all of them Amazonian, but a big number are unknown. Oropoch virus Here’s an example: Native to this region, it began to spread after heavy deforestation near Manaus and quickly spread to Brazil and Latin America.
Viruses reply to environmental stressors – temperature, humidity, environmental changes – and mutate until they find ideal conditions. Dengue fever demonstrates this: when the minimum temperature, previously between 15°C and 18°C, rises to 22°C, it creates the right environment for the virus to multiply more rapidly and the virus grows more rapidly. Similarly, we reached tens of millions of cases in the identical situation. Today, dengue fever is found all around the world: Germany, United States, Italy.
And this is applicable to other arboviruses, reminiscent of chikungunya. On November 12, Brazil had the very best incidence rate Chikungunya In Latin America, Rio Grande do Sul has the very best variety of cases. It is expounded to the imbalance of rain, storms and windstorms that cause viruses, bacteria and fungi.
Based on this diagnosis and biotechnological advances, firms reminiscent of Fucorose are developing recent vaccine platforms. If the virus is adaptive, we attempt to discover the critical point for intervention. But we should always not act only after the loss. Health care shouldn’t be yet able to face the climate crisis—not due to an absence of technology or professionals, but since the system operates reactively.
Diseases change rapidly. Healthcare cannot sustain with this pace. There is an absence of installed capability, coordinated monitoring, and coordinated response. Other countries face the identical problem. The challenge is to speed up team constructing, consolidate early warnings, and convey health care closer to climate modeling. When the National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts (Semdin) indicates a threat, as was the case in São Sebasto, the signs were already there.
Anticipation and prevention
Prevention can also be weak in Brazil and Latin America. Culture is to act after the very fact. But the climate crisis requires behavioral change, urgent motion, monitoring and surveillance. There are necessary experiences, e.g The app is developed by Murcia Chim, from Focrozutilized by forest people to record dead animals. A possible yellow fever epidemic was thus prevented within the old, as non-human primates die first. Other diseases shouldn’t have such clear symptoms, and within the village, field surveillance is required.
We also need specific programs for newly contacted indigenous people. People who haven’t yet been contacted are difficult to observe, but those that have recently been contacted will be monitored—and ought to be a priority in order that ongoing mutations don’t reach these populations and, later, the so-called white man. We have technical conditions. We know the right way to do it. What is lacking is political decision-making and resource allocation—which is clearly there, as evidenced by the increased parliamentary spending of taxpayers’ money.
Brazil has the whole lot it must be a pacesetter in Latin America: excellent institutions, qualified researchers, and countless partnerships. We have the means to mobilize, but we’re in holding mode. And here’s an indication of it at COP30 itself: people don’t make the connection between climate, environment and health.
Air conditioning is insufficient, heat and humidity are high, and lots of arrive exhausted and dehydrated. High temperatures and humidity disrupt homeostasis, especially for those with hypertension, diabetes or heart problems — a trigger that may result in anything from dehydration to death. I felt sick to disabled people and old people.
In a program about climate, health was not a central theme, even though it must have been. We presented one Report On communicable diseases, zoonoses, epidemics, vectors, viruses and climate, but health stays at present. Everything between climate, environment and health is here to see – and yet it stays unseen. Putting this urgency at the middle of the talk is what environmental health desires to do.