 as you know the question is not whether we will have another pandemic in the future but when and one of the factors that we may well push us towards an imminent new pandemic are actually is the impact on climate and health so I'm really grateful to Honourable Minister Barakat to be with us today and talk us to us about climate and health and of course ahead of the COP28 that will be held here in the UAE. Minister thank you very much. Thank you very much and good morning everybody. One of our senior colleagues in the global health world Peter Piot was the first one of the first to say you cannot consider pandemic preparedness without taking into consideration climate and and how true that is and if you allow me I'll just share with you some slides to highlight the connection between climate and health. The WHO has stated that climate is the biggest challenge to health of the 21st century and if you look at a recent report of the IPCC the intergovernmental panel on climate change they say that under a high emission scenario we're expecting 9 million deaths every year by the end of the century just on climate reasons alone. If countries implement the Paris Agreement by the year 2050 we could be saving one million lives every year just from pollution alone and of course there's a financial toll in that you know by the end of this decade by the year 2030 we're looking at a cost of climate impacts on health of between two to four billion dollars every year. So climate does a lot of things that impact human health and you will have seen tragic news of flooding heatwaves of course zoonoses which means the jump of an infection a disease from an animal to humans and that's what triggered the COVID-19 pandemic. Vector-borne diseases vectors are essentially organisms that carry other organisms that cause disease in humans for instance mosquitoes and I'll talk more on mosquitoes in a minute and other things that affect what we call non-communicable disease like mental mental health. So climate change has a real impact on human health and we need to take this very seriously. I'm just going to talk a little on mosquitoes and forgive me this is not a nice topic but just to tell you there are many mosquitoes in the world and but these are three of the nastiest on the screen the one on your on the left Anopheles carries malaria the one in the middle IDs carries dengue and the one on the right Qlex carries West Nile fever these are all nasty diseases many of and many scenarios especially with children will cause death. The WHO has stated that climate change is causing a surge in mosquito related illnesses particularly malaria and dengue and we believe it's related to warmer temperatures redistribution of water human activity so many things are related to climate are causing a surge on these illnesses and this is the burden of malaria. We're talking about children under the age of five dying from cerebral malaria entirely preventable and this tragic scenario happens over and over again we're talking about you know of the 619,000 deaths from malaria in the year 2021 about 80% were for children under the age of five that's half a million children so half a million children every year and that's going that's expected to rise these children are dying from an entirely preventable disease. To add to this another of the mosquitoes that's called Stafensi Anopheles Stafensi having been largely confined to South Asia is now entering Africa because of warmer temperatures and other things and the problem with this particular mosquito vector so this Stafensi carries malaria the problem with this one is it actually likes to bite during the daytime so a big mainstay of managing malaria in the sub-Saharan region has been giving children bed nets that are covered in insecticides the problem with this mosquito is it bites during the day and if it bites during the daytime the bed nets are mostly ineffective you know you're not you don't even it's no point protecting them at night when the biting is also happening in the daytime and the other worrying thing about this mosquito is that it seems to be resistant to most of the insecticides particularly the ones used in indoor room spraying so this is of a concern. Anopheles has a cousin it's called ID's we saw it in the slide of the mosquitoes this mosquito carries dengue and climate change has accelerated the invasion of this mosquito into warmer into into other other climates that are not prepared for it it carries dengue and dengue is now spread in many many countries and the WHO has said that it's actually present in almost every in in every WHO region it will soon be endemic in the United States and many countries in Europe and the the number of people that are predisposed to it are almost half the numbers of people in the world the numbers of people who who have been modelled to have quoted last year were 390 million of whom just under a hundred million were symptomatic and and the number of deaths are in the thousands so this is what we're talking about when when we are worried about climate change moving on to other non vector issues like air pollution we know that over 90% of people breathe unhealthy levels of of air a senior surgeon and in North India in New Delhi is well known to speak about these topics and he said that whereas in the 80s 90% of his patients with with lung cancer were smokers he's saying that now half of them are non smokers and off those a fifth are actually between the ages are under the age of 50 so we we really need to take stock of this and start acting and this is where cop 28 comes in for the first time a cop is hosting a dedicated day for climb for health issues brought on by climate change and that day will be on the 3rd of December while cop is being hosted here in the United Arab Emirates in Dubai and and what cop 20 on on that day what we hope will happen is that it will be a watershed moment for climate and health where we will raise the issues off of the seriousness of climate on health issues lobby support and hopefully raise the issue of health on the political agenda there will be the first ever ministerial on climate and health we will be discussing public health issues how to build systems health systems that are strong enough to to deal with the climate changes and and also will address how to do this in a low carbon way so there's no point building hospitals that will generate more carbon and we're talking about looking at ways of doing it in a low carbon method of course climate change disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in the world women children ethnic minorities poor communities migrants or displaced people other populations and those with underlying health conditions and we have to address how to help developing countries deal deal with this problem this is what health systems strengthening look looks like we won't go through all the topics but it's a it's a it's a holistic approach you can't just take one element and say this is what a strong health system will look like you need all the elements and I will always emphasize leadership and governance so number one is a very important component of a country's response to threats and of course the last one is financing you can't do any of this without dedicated financing for dealing with these with the adaptation on the health day in COP 28 we are hope hoping to proceed with endorsement for a declaration on climate and health this declaration was announced during the World Health Summit in Berlin on the 17th of October this year and we're hoping that before the start of COP we would have had many countries endorse it and the declaration essentially is split into three parts it talks about adaptation the importance of adaptation to deal with climate health issues it talks about increasing financing because you know we cannot it isn't a matter of taking more money from the climate budget this needs to find its own source of funding and then it also talks about the importance of mainstreaming health in all the all the climate agendas and on my last note what is the legacy of COP 28 when it comes to health at the end of the day it's trying to save as many lives as we can by urgent catalytic action and including novel mechanisms for for looking at response so in summary COP 28 will be a call for action for the first time for climate and health issues thank you thank you very much honorable minister and congratulations to the for this initiative on bringing health into the COP 28 a major challenge for for the future and pandemic preparedness