Thematic Overview
Public health around the world faces several challenges, from inaccessibility to health infrastructure, to nutrition and food insecurity, to increasing health risks due to climate change and environmentally sensitive infectious diseases. International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have introduced agendas that target these challenges, e.g., by strengthening health systems, increasing disease preparedness and resilience to climate-induced health risks, while improving nutrition (World Bank) and providing sustainable solutions to strengthen health infrastructure, governance and financing (Asian Development Bank). Pivotal to the work financed by IFIs is access to relevant data and synoptic information on health and their background environmental or socioeconomical triggers. Earth Observation is increasingly seen as an essential source of information which can complement national data and support countries in the monitoring of key indicators related to health risks or factors of vulnerability.
Public Health Themes
The GDA AID Public Health activity provides satellite Earth Observation (EO) information in response to
requirements identified by IFIs and their client governments in developing countries, focusing on the following
public health themes:
- Health infrastructure accessibility. Health infrastructure accessibility plays a critical role in shaping public
well-being, particularly during natural disasters or crises. The central concern underscores the necessity to
quantify and analyse population accessibility to health centres, emphasizing the need for adequacy and
responsiveness to the ever-evolving dynamics of population density and urban development. This analysis
tackles the pressing issue of limited access to essential healthcare facilities, highlighting the urgent
requirement for a solution capable of thoroughly assessing the sufficiency of healthcare infrastructure in
alignment with population distribution.
- Health infrastructure vulnerability. Healthcare infrastructure is at risk from a variety of threats, both natural
and human-made. Natural disasters include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, floods, fires, and
pandemics. Human-made disasters encompass war, pollution, nuclear and other explosions, fires, hazardous
materials exposures, transportation accidents, and pandemics. These events can lead to a mass exodus of
people, disease outbreaks, and destruction of property, ultimately destabilising societies.
- Climate-related health risks. Health is a transversal topic in climate-driven risk assessment as it assumes
the negative impact of climate change in critical domains like agriculture, water, and landscape management.
Climate affects directly the spreading patterns of infectious diseases by making them more intense, persistent
and broader. Such pattern dynamics can put health resources in pressure due to lack of prevention and/or
economic resources to admit and manage an increasing number of ill people and/or disease outbreaks.
Indirectly, climate affects food and water access through more severe extreme events like droughts, flooding,
storms, strong wind, or sea level rise. The result, according to new World Bank data, is that a warmer climate
could lead to at least 21 million additional deaths by 2050 from just five health risks: extreme heat, stunting,
diarrhoea, malaria, and dengue.
- Environmentally sensitive infectious diseases. Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, malaria and
yellow fever account for a large share of the overall burden of vector-borne diseases, which place 80% of the
world’s population at risk of infection and take 700,000 lives each year. They are increasing in prevalence,
geographical distribution, and severity, representing an increasing threat for humans and animals worldwide.
Leptospirosis is another neglected public health threat, which affects roughly 1.03 million people per year
across the globe. Vulnerable populations are particularly affected and the disease is especially prevalent in
tropical and subtropical regions, with the highest burden among low- and middle-income countries. These
zoonotic diseases often depend on complex interactions between vector and host species which, in turn, are
influenced by changes in temperature, rainfall, land use, and other environmental factors. If these factors can
be mapped in space and time, then human disease risk can be estimated.
- Airborne and waterborne health hazards. Air pollution, wildfires, dust storms, and algae blooms are some
of the health hazards that affect large populations around the world. As the frequency and severity of these
events have been increasing with climate change, so does the associated health risk.
- Emerging diseases in the One Health context. ‘One Health’ is a collaborative, multisectoral and
transdisciplinary approach to balance and optimise the health of humans, animals and the environment by
recognising the interconnectivity between people, flora, fauna and their shared environment. It is particularly
important to prevent, predict, detect, and respond to global health threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
The approach mobilises multiple sectors and involves the public health, veterinary and environmental
sectors, making it relevant for food and water security, nutrition and the control of zoonoses (diseases that
can spread between animals and humans, such as flu, rabies and Rift Valley fever).
- Nutrition and food insecurity. Food security has different dimensions, namely, food availability (enough
food of appropriate quality), food access (access by individuals to adequate resources for acquiring
appropriate foods for nutritious diet), utilisation (through adequate diet, clean water, sanitation and health
care to reach a state of nutritional well-being where all physiological needs are met) and stability (access to
adequate food at all times). Chronic and acute hunger are on the rise due to various factors including civil
conflicts, socio-economic conditions, natural hazards, climate change and pests. From the health
perspective, people affected by food insecurity are more prone to experience infectious diseases, chronic
conditions (heart diseases, hypertension, etc.), or mental illness.
Consortium members
