Why India must raise health budget to tackle impending climate disasters

Mitigation measures will have to include increasing expenditure on healthcare, ensuring systems that include best practices, and improving the quality of data-gathering

With the Covid-19 crisis having laid bare the poor state of India’s healthcare system, experts warn that India is under-prepared for another brewing global crisis--climate change.

Extreme weather events are predicted to bring heat- and humidity-related mortality and morbidity, infectious diseases following floods and storms, and malnutrition resulting from frequent crop failures, according to experts. “The healthcare system will have to prepare for the myriad health endpoints known to be associated with climate change,” said V. Ramana Dhara, professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health, Hyderabad. Rising sea levels will have health effects from population displacement, including injury, illness