Every climate action counts: MSF and the Lancet Countdown joint brief 2024

The ripple effect of each failure on health systems in humanitarian settings

A man standing on a canoe near the town of Old Fangak, South Sudan.

Flooding in Old Fangak, South Sudan, one of the countries already feeling the impact of the climate emergency. | South Sudan 2024 © Simon Rolin/MSF

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) works with vulnerable and marginalized communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change despite being the least responsible for the emissions that are generating the climate crisis. 

In response, our teams are engaged in developing environmentally-informed health and humanitarian interventions across six focus areas: mitigating carbon footprints, filling research gaps, enhancing early warning systems and partnerships, assessing vulnerability and risk, improving disease surveillance, and building adaptable programs for climate impacts. Each area is interdependent, meaning failure to address one not only impedes progress on that specific component but also affects an entire sequence of subsequent actions. 

This 2024 joint brief draws on evidence from indicators in the 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change to present examples of how climate change and environmental degradation are making provision of assistance more difficult by amplifying health and humanitarian needs and by further complicating interventions. The brief also highlights activities that respond to the climate crisis using a three-pillar approach: 

Lancet joint brief

Joint brief The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change & Médecins Sans Frontières

Read the joint brief

The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change 

The publication of the Lancet-MSF brief is linked to the launch of the 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown, which monitors the changing impacts of climate change on health, and assesses how well governments worldwide are delivering on their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Read the full report >>