Abstract
Climate change and variability are the main drivers of several infectious and non-infectious diseases that are of great public health importance in Ethiopia. Malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, meningitis, leishmaniosis, and different forms of diarrheal diseases are the most common climate sensitive diseases. The Health Vulnerability Index (HVI) assessment is adopted from Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI-IPCC). It considers the three IPCC contributing factors to vulnerability: exposure, adaptive capacity, and sensitivity as major factors along the nine profiles/determinants using secondary data from published documents. The values for the exposure levels ranged from 0.12 to 0.69 and grouped the regions into moderately exposed and highly exposed regions to climate change. All regions are found highly sensitive to climate change induced diseases with the exception of Addis Ababa. Adaptive capacity measured in terms of several socio-economic factors such as finance, infrastructure, available health professionals and social determinants of health reveals variation between regions characterized as urban and the rest. HVI values range from less vulnerable (−0.247) to highly vulnerable (0.279). The analysis categorized regions into relatively least vulnerable (0.6%), moderately vulnerable (49.95%), highly vulnerable (10.35%) and very high vulnerable (39.5%) of the total land mass. Health adaptation strategies recommended include improved public health surveillance systems; establishing health and climate data management system; strengthening early warning systems; improved public health services; improved water, sanitation, and hygiene system; human resource development; enhanced public awareness and attitudes; targeted intervention to regional contexts by enhanced financial resources.
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Simane, B. et al. (2017). Health Vulnerability and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change in Ethiopia. In: Leal Filho, W., Belay, S., Kalangu, J., Menas, W., Munishi, P., Musiyiwa, K. (eds) Climate Change Adaptation in Africa. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49520-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49520-0_11
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