Second National Communications Health Sector Report 1.0 Climate change and health Concern for human health as an imperative becomes its reason for looking at ways and means to uphold it. Biologically, we know that the interaction of our bodies with the environment around us is one of the important factors that spell our state of health.1 As we interact with our outside environment the body performs the delicate process of maintaining homeostasis to adapt for it to function at its peak. The interplay of the environment and the body with the effects of climate change will spell what toll it will take on us. The effects will be both direct and indirect. As the body adjusts by itself from within, we will also have to find the means to adjust from without in order to complement the adaptation mechanisms. Human population health has always been central in the justification for sustainable development but nearly invisible in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations. Current scientific evidence indicates that climate change will contribute to the global burden of disease through increases in diarrheal disease, vector-borne disease, and malnutrition, and the health impacts of extreme weather and climate events.2 As a developing country, our health resources are already in a state of stretch when we talk about prioritizing and maintaining public health and health systems. With the effects of climate change on health becoming noticed, we will find it as another stressor on top of the present public health challenge that will have to be responded to sooner than later. And it seems that options at adaptation will be the more prudent way to go. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the IPCC released in Apr 2007 notes that “even the most stringent mitigation efforts cannot avoid the impacts of climate change in the next decades which makes adaptation essential”.3 As such it becomes an imperative for the Philippines, a developing country that has inadequate health resources to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The following is a WHO framework and flowchart for looking at climate change and its health impacts. It shows also where the specific research needs will be considered necessary. As we start off with our appreciation of the effects in the Philippines, it would be good to consider this framework from which the department of health can build its own and prioritize accordingly. 1 Paraso,G. Climate change and Health Nexus. Manila Observatory 2003. 2Kovats, 18 3 RS et. Al. Climate change and human health: estimating avoidable deaths and disease. Risk Anal. 2005 Dec;25(6):1409- Fourth Assessment report AR4. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), UNFCCC, 2007. 3