A six-year, pioneering regional technical assistance initiative has boosted the capacity of health systems in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to respond to climate-induced health threats amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced.

ADB's project helps boost health system capacity in Vietnam. Photo: The Hanoi Times

The Strengthening Resilience to Climate Change in the Health Sector in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) project helped the three countries adopt national health adaptation plans to address weather-related health risks, including heat and communicable diseases such as dengue, malaria, heat stress, and diarrhea.

In all, it completed detailed vulnerability and adaptation assessments for 14 high-risk provinces in those countries and trained more than 1,300 health sector staff on climate change and health adaptation. In addition, more than 600 policymakers from the public and private sectors participated in high-level advocacy meetings and workshops focused on national health adaptation strategies and the coordination of disease surveillance and responses, among others.

The project also helped the three governments identify cost-effective investments to reduce mortality and morbidity caused by diseases related to climate change. They included establishing early heat warning systems and upgrading health facilities to be more climate-resilient, especially in remote, underserved communities.

“The project has helped reduce Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam’s vulnerability to climate-induced health threats, especially among vulnerable populations, including the poor, migrants, and ethnic minorities,” said ADB Director of Human and Social Development for Southeast Asia Ayako Inagaki.

“The health national adaptation plan and surveillance systems supported by this project will help Vietnam mitigate climate change’s health and economic impacts amid the Covid-19 pandemic,” said ADB Country Director for Vietnam Andrew Jeffries. 

The project was approved in 2015 with a US$4.4 million grant from the Nordic Development Fund and counterpart financing from the three governments. It was ADB’s first initiative in Southeast Asia to improve government responses to climate change’s impacts on health care. It built on ADB’s comparative advantage in facilitating regional cooperation and strengthening regional health cooperation as a public good.

The governments of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam recognize that climate change is a major threat to their sustainable economic development. All three had approved strategic plans for public health as part of their national strategic plans on climate change.

The project was implemented by Cambodia’s Preventive Medicine Department, the Lao PDR’s Department of Hygiene and Health Promotion, and Vietnam’s Health Environment Management Agency. All three countries were actively involved in the technical assistance’s preparation, implementation, capacity-building activities, and knowledge sharing.

In particular, the project improved timely data gathering for governments to monitor the impact of climate change on public health, tools such as a database, a modeling approach, and a digital atlas.

The project also trained national and provincial health staff on surveillance systems for climate-sensitive diseases, the analysis of epidemiology data, and health challenges unique to women, children, and other vulnerable groups.